UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


BOOK ; CLASS VOLUME 


3o\ : C42 


Return this book on or before the 
| Latest Date stamped below. A 
charge is made on all overdue 

_ books. 


U. of I, Library 


JAN 26 1944 


mr 17 1 
Ns 


3 1987 NOV 9% 17 17625-S 


HUMAN WORK 


aay iy 
yp Hk 4 
h\ NO 
‘ Ty HY 
+ / ‘ 
Ha) 
bs } 
y i) 
j 
, 
i 
Peas 


OTHER BOOKS i 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR — 


Women and Economics, ‘Concerning 
INA EO This Our World o 


HUMAN WORK 


BY 
a4 e*s 


Mrs CHARLOTTE ‘PERKIN S) GILMAN 


©, 
o8e 


NEW YORK © 
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 
MCMIV 


D yy ; 1g 
n } J wee i t 


oe Copyright, 1904, by 
as McCLURE, PHILLIPS & 


Published, May, 1904, N 


b 


CHAPTER 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTORY 

Man As A Factor 1n Soctat EvoLuTion 
CONCEPT AND CONDUCT 

Some Fatsrt Concepts 

Tue Nature or Socrety (I) 


Tue Natvre or Society (II) . : 


Tue Soctat Sour : x ; 


Tue Socrat Bopy 

Tue Nature or Work (I) . 

Tue Nature or Work (II) 
SPECIALISATION . , : ; 
PRODUCTION 

DisTRIBUTION 

Consumption (1) 


Consumption (IT) 


Our Position To-pay . : : ° 


Tue True Position . ; A 


bitnd x Z t } 
: 6), 263 rs 


125 
157 
179 
203 
Q27 
249 
275 
299 
321 
341 
367 


HUMAN WORK 


Hi 


nih 


BO Men 
he Ur 
Bie 
Pveiahs 


iy 
laity 
TN at 


a 

ity 
it 

ty 


EINTRODUCTORY 
Summary 


Common facts hard to understand. Social phenom- 
ena most important to modern life, yet least under- 
stood. Complexity no obstacle if system is known. 
Practical knowledge of sociology quite possible. Co- 
existence does not prove true association. Social rudi- 
ments cause pain. Human pam always conspicuous. 
“The Star of Suffering.” Religions rest on concep- 
tion of essential pain. Suicide a human specialty. 
Pain a social condition, remediable and preventable. 
Physical environment largely mastered, present difficul- 
ties social. Past societies died of internal diseases. 
Social indigestion. Human nature progressive. Lan- 
guage retarded by ignorance and superstitions. Civilt- 
sation retarded by same things. Economic difficulties 
our principal ones to-day. “The root of all evil.” In- 
nutrition, over-nutrition, mal-nutrition, wrong action 
im body politic. Difficulty lies m false ideas. Effect 
of woman labour and slave labour. Consciousness proof 
of power. Modern society increasingly conscious. 
Pain most conspicuous, pathology precedes physiology. 
Errors of early therapeutics, personal and social. Need 
of scientific social physiology, as base of treatment. 
Must understand works to mend watch, or society. 
Knowledge enough to begin. This book a study of the 
economic processes of Society 


i 
INTRODUCTORY 


THE most familiar facts are often hardest to under- 
stand. This is described by Ward as “ the illusion of 
the near.” Because of nearness we get no perspective; 
because of continual presence we become used to one 
view and fail to perceive others. 

To the consideration of new facts we come with com- 
paratively open minds, impressed by each item and its 
relation to the rest; but facts long known are supposed 
to be understood, and we resent the slight offered to our 
intelligence in the proposal to reconsider. Yet the most 
revolutionary discoveries have been made among pre- 
cisely the most familiar facts; as in the nature and use 
of steam, or the endless potentialities of coal tar. 

We had, and used, and supposed we knew, our own 
bodies, through long centuries of living and dying, yet 
our late-learned physiology was able to show us facts 
most vitally important which we had never dreamed of. 
Social phenomena have been going on about us since 
we began to be human; they are as familiar as physical 
or physiological phenomena, but even less understood. 
Yet the interaction of social forces and social condi- 
tions form increasingly prominent factors in human 
life. 

Primitive man was most affected by physical condi- 

5 


6 HUMAN WORK 


tions, he had to adjust himself mainly to the exigencies 
of climate, of the soil, of animal competitors. Modern 
man has to adjust himself mainly to social conditions; 
he is most affected by governments, religions, economic 
systems, education, general customs. Yet the study of 
this especially pressing and important environment is 
but little advanced. The smooth-worn commonplace 
facts slip through our fingers, and we fail to see the 
meaning of our most important surroundings simply 
because we have always had them. Also we allow our- 
selves to be discouraged by the extent and complexity 
of social conditions. This is quite needless. 

Grass may be studied in any patch, regardless of the 
acreage of our prairies, or the height of the plumes of 
the Pampas. <A tree would seem appallingly complex 
if we tried to understand it from a cross-section taken 
through the branching top; but from root to leaf it is 
not so hard to follow. Moreover, early writers on this 
subject have frightened us with technicalities. Mention 
some patent fact about our social composition, show a 
relation, suggest a law, and your alarmed hearer cries: 
** Oh, that is Political Economy! I cannot understand 
that, it is too difficult!” It is really a pity that such 
awe should be felt in the contemplation of our social 
processes; as though a man were afraid to learn any- 
thing about his digestion on the ground that it was 
*¢ physiology.” 

The statement, “ Hens lay eggs,” expresses a fact in 
Ornithology, Zodlogy, and Biology—but it is none the 
more difficult to grasp. The special student may, if he 


CHAPTER ONE if 


so desires, amass enough knowledge in these lapping 
sciences to appall the uninitiated; but a mere practical 
farmer can learn enough of the nature and habits of 
hens to insure a profitable supply of eggs, without over- 
taxing his brain. There may be fields of sociological 
science quite beyond the average mind, and rightly left 
to the learned specialist ; but that is no reason why we 
should not learn enough of the nature and habits of 
society to insure a more profitable and pleasant life. 

With our fertility of resource and high attainments 
in skill, knowledge, power, and their material product, 
it is strange indeed that we have made so little progress 
in the management of our social processes. The civili- 
sation natural to our age is conspicuously retarded by 
ignorance, disease, crime, poverty, and other disagree- 
able anachronisms. These things no more belong to 
this period of civilisation because they coexist with it 
than do the Bushman and Hottentot because they co- 
exist with it, or than the vermiform appendix belongs 
to our stage of physiological development because it 
still exists in it—a mischievous rudiment. Our socio- 
logical rudiments cause us increasing pain. 

The growing social consciousness of our times is 
most keenly stirred by a sense of pain. We are begin- 
ning to feel the great common processes of human 
life; but we feel them, at first, only when they hurt. 
Our individual distresses we have always felt; and have 
voiced our anguish and resentment more and more 
loudly as civilisation progressed. Earlier man—and 
in particular the unhappy savage, with his unavoid- 


8 HUMAN WORK 

able privations, dangers, and mishaps, and his ingenious 
systems of self-torture—had more to hurt him, but 
made far less fuss about it. For many an age the 
pain of human life has formed so conspicuous a fact 
that we have called the earth “ The Star of Suffering.” 
Our common illustrations of happiness are drawn from 
the lower animals: ‘‘ as happy as a clam,” we say; “ as 
gay as a lark”; “ as merry as a cricket.” 

The world’s greatest religions have rested on a con- 
ception of general human unhappiness. Divine curses 
are held to account for it, Divine blessings to allay it, 
and a future life to recompense us for it—if we are 
good; but the basic proposition is the unhappiness of 
human life. Again, we are given a theory of reincar- 
nation; of a slow transmigration through many lines 
towards a plane where we do not feel, feeling being 
admitted to mean pain. In Heaven, Paradise, Nir- 
vana, from the Happy Hunting Grounds and Walhalla 
to our most refined conception of eternal progress, the 
bliss of a future life is advanced as some countercheck 
to the misery of this one, some hope to enable us to 
live. 

So unbearable is the amount of human pain that we 
alone among all animals manifest the remarkable phe- 
nomenon of suicide—a deliberate effort of a form of 
life to stop living because living hurts so much. Social 
evolution does not proportionately abate social suffer- 
ing; it improves external conditions and insures phys- 
ical existence more and more reliably; but it does not 
make us commensurately happier. We die of different’ 


CHAPTER ONE 9 


diseases, and we do not die so soon, but we continue 
to suffer while alive, we continue to refer to “ the sea 
of human misery,” we continue to kill ourselves because 
we cannot bear’ the pain of being alive. 

All this distress, formerly borne by each man as 
simply his ‘ lot,”—his personal allowance,—was yet 
vaguely recognised by larger thinkers as “* our common 
lot ” ; even physical diseases, those most personal facts, 
we have generalised as “ the ills that flesh is heir to.” 
This generalising is a most legitimate social instinct; 
now grown keener, more accurate, felt by far more 
persons; and in its light we have begun to recognise 
many of those long-borne “ ills” as not only remedi- 
able, but preventable. Yet, though we have done 
something, our condition remains lamentable. The 
general causes of our still-existing difficulties are in- 
ternal rather than external. 

Society has long since mastered the difficulties of ad- 
justment with physical conditions, but cannot arrange 
its own intersocial conditions on a satisfactory basis. 
** Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands 
mourn ”—not nature’s. From the Arctic Circle to the 
Tropics man gets along contentedly enough with natural 
obstacles ; he may be checked and modified in develop- 
ment, but he is not unhappy; he strikes a balance with 
nature and is comparatively at rest. But in his pro- 
gressive social development he has not yet been able 
to strike a balance; his interhuman relations are un- 
certain and mischievous. So far as history shows us, 
each social group seems to have carried within it the 


10 HUMAN WORK 


seeds of disease; to have grown worse as it progressed ; 
and, while conquering all external difficulties, to have 
succumbed in the end to its own inward disorders. ‘The 
suffering of an advanced society is not that of one 
struggling for subsistence, or in combat with enemies, 
but of one in the throes of disease. Society has safety, 
peace, shelter, warmth, enough to eat,—and chronic 
indigestion ! | 

Are these disadvantages of human life essential, as 
heretofore supposed; or are they merely pathological 
phenomena and quite unnecessary? We are now be- 
ginning to take the latter view, and a most cheerful 
one it is. 
_. Instead of accepting “ human nature” as a fixed 

condition of mingled pain and pleasure, goodness and 
badness, with the pain and badness preponderating, 
we are now recognising that human nature grows and 
_ changes like the rest of created forms; that it has al- 
ready greatly changed and improved, and will continue 
to do so. We are learning that the troubles of any race 
and time are partly external and subduable; partly 
internal and these also subduable. See, for instance, 
a savage tribe in North America. Their existence is 
retarded by certain conditions of climate and geog- 
raphy; of the fauna and flora surrounding them; of 
animal and human enemies and competitors; but also 
and more seriously by their superstitions. The theory 
of witchcraft; the ignorance as to hygiene and belief 
in * the medicine man”; the contempt for women and 
so for productive labour—these kept the savage savage 


CHAPTER ONE 1 


in the same region where another race is civilised. 
That race, dominated by larger and truer concepts, has 
conquered the same external difficulties and risen to far 
higher levels. 

So we, in our present stage of civilisation, are partly 
retarded by natural conditions of environment. We 
are still decimated by wild beasts, though it takes a 
microscope to find them, and by still more bloodthirsty 
vegetables, of similar dimensions. We are still frozen 
to death, sunstruck, drowned, and shocked by lightning. 
We fight the phylloxera, the cottony scale, and anoph- 
eles; we have to tunnel mountains, irrigate deserts, 
bridge rivers, and cross seas; our struggle with the 
environment is still highly educative. But meanwhile 
our progress is retarded far more by conditions of 
social pathology—by ignorance, poverty, and crime; 
and these conditions are no part of our essential en- 
vironment, but are due to economic errors and super- 
.stitions. If we could straighten out our internal diffi- 
culties we could get on gaily with the outside ones. 

Now, since we can easily see in history how we have 
at given times suffered from certain popular mistakes, 
and how on better knowledge we have outgrown those 
errors and their painful consequences, why is it not 
reasonable to assume that we may outgrow our present 
mistakes and superstitions and their painful conse- 
quences? Is it not possible that the persistence in 
society of certain morbid phenomena is due to an equal 
persistence of certain false ideas? and that the one may 
be removed by removing the other? So long as we 


12 : HUMAN WORK 

believe in witchcraft, or in the divine right of kings, 
or in chattel slavery, so long do we act from that 
belief, and so long is our action injurious. 

Our most conspicuous troubles to-day are economic. 
We have reached a stage of religious freedom where 
the growing power of the human brain is allowed to 
work unchecked toward higher perceptions of truth, 
and beautiful results have followed. We have reached a 
stage of political freedom where we can express the pub- 
lic will in public action, as far as the great majority of 
one sex is concerned, and are rapidly advancing to where 
the whole nation will share the same position. Here, 
too, beautiful results have followed. But in economic 
development we find that whereas there is a great ex- 
tension and multiplication of economic processes, and 
commensurately of wealth, yet there is a mighty 
product of evil which seems to keep pace with the ad- 
vance of civilisation. : 

So many of our troubles are patently due to eco- 
nomic sources that our rough-and-ready philosophy 
has accepted the statement, ‘‘ the love of money is the 
root of all evil.” Some shorten the accusation to 
money itself. 

This general observation is right in its direction, but 
not sufficiently accurate to be reliable. Money being 
a concrete fact, and in its function as representative 
of all purchasable goods of fascinating importance, we 
quite naturally attach to it directly the glaring evils 
we find in its company. We see the misery and sin 
caused by too little of it and the misery and sin caused 


CHAPTER ONE 13 


by too much of it; we see the various villainies prac- 
tised to get it, from robbery so small and direct that 
you catch the thief’s hand in your pocket, to robbery so 
large and indirect that the thieving hand filches un- 
caught from a million pockets, via hired railroads, 
hired legislators, and hired newspapers; we see all this, 
and attach our condemnation to money itself, or, at 
farthest, to the love of it. 

Now, knowing more of the nature of society, we can 
begin to classify and analyse its difficulties more intelli- 
gently and find them somewhat in this order. Let us call 
poverty in-nutrition—a large part of our social tissues 
are insufficiently nourished. Let us call wealth over- 
nutrition, or repletion, or congestion, or fatty degenera- 
tion—a small part of our social tissues are gorged and 
inflamed with too much nourishment. Then let us call 
our large supply of poor, false, bad things: adulterated 
articles of food, shoddy clothes, paper shoes,—all the 
flood of worthless stuff society produces and consumes, 
—mal-nutrition ; the blood is bad and does not nourish. 
Back of these phenomena we find still more important 
conditions, having to do not with the nourishment of 
the body politic, but with its activities. There is wrong 
action in the social organism; it does not work properly. 
Hence this local congestion of wealth, this peculiar 
arrest of distribution which makes both rich and poor 
dissatisfied in the widest field of life—work. 

Work is the most conspicuous feature of human life. 
In the conditions of work, in our ideas and feelings 
about work, in our habits, methods, and systems of 


14 HUMAN WORK 


work, lies the subject-matter of this book. It is held 
that our difficulties are to be found, not in any essen- 
tial traits of human nature, and not in any essential 
conditions of human life, but merely in the preserva- 
tion in our minds of certain ancient and erroneous ideas 
and feelings which act continually upon the normal 
processes of social economics, preventing the process 
and poisoning the product. See, for instance, among 
our American savages, how the accepted theory, that 
work is proper only to women, arrests their economic 
development and their personal progress as well. See, 
in the Southern States of earlier years, how the pop- 
ular error, that work was proper only to slaves, arrested 
development in many lines. It is here asserted that 
we have still in the popular mind certain traditions— 
superstitions, falsehoods—about work, and that to 
them is traceable the economic distresses so conspicuous 
among us. 

Our increasing consciousness of this distress is a most 
gratifying fact. Consciousness always involves power. 
The power to feel implies the power to act. Feeling 
was evolved as a guide to action; in nature’s wise ad- 
ministration there would have been no reason for giving 
conscious pain and pleasure to a creature which could 
neither avoid the one nor seek the other. The sensory 
nerves are developed in careful proportion to the 
motory: what feels can move, what moves can feel. 
This law is followed all the way up through physical 
evolution to social, and is just as true of the social 
body as of any other. 


oe ee ne eee 


CHAPTER ONE 15 


A comparatively inert primitive society reacts to 
injury or benefit as does a plant, but shows little evi- 
dence of pain or pleasure. Modern society, how- 
ever, in proportion to its rapidly differentiating or- 
ganism and its increase in swift, accurate, complex 
activity, manifests a corresponding increase in con- 
sciousness. We are now socially conscious to an acute 
degree; and this proves our equal ability to act, to 
avert injury, and seek benefit, not as individuals, but 
as a society. 

Naturally pain is the most impressive fact, for 
pleasure is a normal condition and only felt in con- 
trast to pain. Pain is some interference with natural 
law, and as such makes itself sharply felt. Man was 
led to the study of physiology through pathology ; 
the ache introduced us to the stomach. So society feels 
first and most what hurts it, and our study of sociology 
is prefaced by social pathology. And as men, in their 
first gropings after relief from pain, practised all 
manner of tricks with fetich-worship, with wild, noisy 
dances, with filthy medicines, with murderous leeches 
and lances and poisonous pills; and as still, among the 
ignorant, any wide-blazoned patent medicine is sure of 
acceptance if it promises to cure the pain, felt but not 
understood ; so society’s first efforts at relief are super- 
stitious, empirical, and often deadly bad for its system. 

We need the patient, scientific study of the social 
body, its structure and functions, anatomy, physiology, 
and pathology, as we have had it for the physical body ; 
we need careful, recorded observation of the results of 


16 HUMAN WORK 


previous remedies, and of new ones as well, and all this 
is a new field of science. We have plenty of facts at 
hand; all history lies behind us with its glaring records ; 
all life is before us to-day in every stage of develop- 
ment; but we have only begun to arrange and study 
those facts from the point of view of the sociologist. 
6 


‘works ” for 
fracture, loss, misplacement, or some “ foreign body ” ; 


If a watch goes wrong, we examine its 


but to do this successfully involves knowledge of what 
a watch is, what it is for, how it is made, and how it 
works. We must know the mechanics of the thing if 
we are to mend it. So if Society goes wrong we must 
examine its works, and we cannot tell if they are wrong, 
nor set them right, unless we have some knowledge of 
what Society is, what it is for, how it was made, and, 
above all, how it works. 

This does not require all knowledge; no such complete 
information as Tennyson spoke of in the *% Flower in 
the crannied wall.” Flowers are sufficiently under- 
stood for us to raise them in beauty and health and 
profusion; and we can learn enough about this last 
great form of life, Society, to mend its ways, without 
waiting for absolute wisdom. a 

This book is a study of the economic processes of 
society, explaining the immediate causes of a large 
part of our human suffering, and suggesting certain 
simple, swift, and easy changes of mind by which we 
may so alter our processes as to avoid that suffering 
and promote our growth and happiness. 


II: MAN AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL 
EVOLUTION 


Summary 


Social development affected by physical conditions. 
By our personal choice. We have overestimated the 
latter. “Natural” in contradistinction to “ per- 
sonal,” or genetic and teleological. Conscious acts 
most conspicuous to man. Recognition of some other 
forces at work. Man’s contribution to his own con- 
duct. How individuals have promoted it, and the mass 
always retarded. How we retard evolution. Ptero- 
dactyls as conscious agents. Salutary effect of uncon- 
scious social processes. Our conscious behaviour always 
behind the times. Historic mstances. Nature of the 
brain. Effect of education. Relative depth and size 
of early impressions as compared with later. Our 
ability to preserve and transmit ancient ideals. Folk- 
myth of a superior past. Reversionary tendencies, up- 
ward tendency of new brains checked by education; 
effect on religious progress. Should we have done 
better without conscious conduct? No. Enormous 
benefit if rightly used. Race memory, use of past. 
Real value of youth. Our attitude toward it. What 
it should be. Great advance in education in social 
consciousness. How to adjust conscious conduct to 
action of law. | 


rr) 


pee 


II 


MAN AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL 
EVOLUTION 


Tue contribution of the human race to its own de- 
velopment is the distinguishing feature in social evolu- 
tion. That prompt and simple reaction to the environ- 
ment by which the evolution of sub-human species has 
been accomplished, is complicated, with us, by a de- 
layed and uncertain reaction, due to stored energy and 
to the internal environment of man’s conscious mind. 
We are of course modified by conditions, and transmit 
the modification through heredity. The results in so- 
cial formation and conduct are clear and startling, but 
if man could in no way alter these results or select 
among the causes, to study them would be painful and 
useless. 

Man has, however, a limited private supply of energy, 
his storage battery of nerve force; not initial with him, 
but temporarily his to use; and he has also, in the 
imaged world of his mind, an environment which leads 
him to use that personal energy according to his sepa- 
rate views of life; thus he can, and does, modify his 
conduct to a considerable degree. His contribution 
varies widely in extent; some individuals living very 
largely from personal initiative, and some almost with- 
out; it varies as widely in value; being sometimes of a 

19 


20 HUMAN WORK 


most advanced grade, and at others distinctly primi- 
tive and reversionary. 

We have heretofore gravely overestimated the rela- 
tive extent of this personally modified conduct or telic 
action, as compared with the conduct which is the re- 
sult of unconsciously transmitted forces, or genetic 
action. In the dawn of human consciousness the field of 
personal conduct was most prominent to man, and he 
took small note of what things he did under the unob- 
structed action of natural tendencies. 

The word ‘ natural” is here used in contradistinc- 


*‘ personal”’’; not as holding man’s personal 


tion to 
conduct to be un-, anti-, or super-natural, but as dis- 
tinguishing between the actions resultant from general 
laws, and those resultant from the man’s choice and 
will; between the genetic and the telic. Marriage, for 
instance, is a result of the natural laws of sex-attrac- 
tion, with their deeper bases in race-preservation ; celi- 
bacy is a result of personal choice and will, based on 
certain ideas cherished by the individual; marriage is 
genetic—celibacy, telic. The cerebral activity re- 
quired to decide upon and enforce a given act, apart 
from and perhaps in spite of the natural tendencies, 
makes such acts more perceptible and more memorable ; 
and man inevitably grew to overestimate that part of 
his behaviour which had passed muster in the front 
halls of the brain. In these cases he felt himself act, 
and assumed that the acts which he felt were the sum 
of his conduct. Plainly perceiving, however, that these 
acts of his were very irregular and unreliable, often 


CHAPTER TWO 2) 


indeed differing widely from his intention, he soon 
postulated other forces as working upon him, sup- 
posedly personal, for he knew no others; and gods and 
devils were installed in his universe as cogent factors in 
this perplexing mass of conduct. Some, feeling dimly 
the larger currents of tendency pressing upon them, 
conceived of Fate, Destiny, Karma, Fore-ordination—- 
something high and invincible, governing conduct from 
afar. In all the history of man’s conscious life he 
has been struggling with his conduct, and seeking to 
- modify it to what he from time to time considered de- 
sirable ends. 

That he has accomplished so much is due to the tre- 
mendous power he has to use in this way; that he has 
accomplished so little is due to his misapprehension of 
the best means of applying this power; and that he has 
produced such strange, peculiar kinds of personally 
modified conduct is due to his varying conception of 
the desired ends. 

Overestimating his personal power, he constantly 
overdraws upon its resources, exhorting the individual 
to behave thus and thus; as if all conduct were telic. 
He has known little or nothing of the genetic laws of 
human progress which would have guided his course 
and lightened his task so wonderfully, could he but have 
understood them. Better housing for the poor does 
more to develop chastity than preaching it to two 
families who live in one small room. 

As we now begin to grasp something of the position 
of man in nature, and of the processes of social evolu- 


22 HUMAN WORK 


tion, we see how irresistibly he was urged upward by 
the progressive tendencies which lift mankind from say- 
agery as they lifted the savage from the brute; and 
also how he has been held back by cumulative habits 
and earlier instincts. In this vast field of evolutionary 
processes, man, as a conscious, self-directing agent, 
flounders slowly along, now pushing violently toward a 
stage of development quite beyond his immediate grasp; 
and now as violently maintaining standards and -ideals 
long since outgrown and become retroactive and in- 
jurious. 

The extremes of his influence are most marked. 
Again and again has the race put forth a man with a 
specialised brain fitted to grasp a scheme of conduct 
far superior to that obtaining in his time; and, under 
the functional necessity of a member of society, urg- 
ing this higher scheme of conduct upon his fellows with 
sublime faith, courage, and endurance. Social evolution 
has been markedly promoted by minds like these. Al- 
Ways someone seeing ahead and proclaiming the ad- 
vance, and the mass, as they become able to grasp the 
new concepts, struggling mightily to modify their con- 
duct thereto. Looking only at this side of it, we should 
say that man, as a factor in social evolution, worked 
most powerfully to promote it. 

There is quite another side to it, however. The 
human brain, while it has the capacity to foresee future 
conditions, and to dictate conduct modified to such im- 
proved ends, has also memory, the power to retain past 
conditions, and to modify conduct upon them. If we 


CHAPTER TWO 23 


can imagine active self-consciousness in some stage of 
physical evolution, it is easy to see how diversely it 
might have worked. 

Take a high-minded pterodactyl, for instance—some 
poetic, philosophic, progressive pterodactyl. He might 
have had dim concepts of larger wings and lighter 
bones, of dryness and sunshine and wide spaces of 
sweet air; he might even have had faint visions of soft 
feathers, of nestled eggs, and the joyous music of love. 
If he were capable of transmitting these ideals among 
his brethren, they might have been induced to soar more 
assiduously and perch the higher—so sooner introduc- 
ing the archeopteryx. 

But if on the other hand we postulate our self-con- 
scious pterodactyls as possessing long memories and 
venerable traditions, ancestor worship and a retro- 
active education, we should then find them forever 
yearning for their reptilian past; forcibly re-immers- 
ing each aspiring young generation in adhesive depths 
of mud, and piously destroying the would-be birds as 
enemies to society. It is on this side of our conscious- 
ness that man, as a factor in social evolution, is of such 
doubtful value. 

A consciousness that works backwards, a personal 
modification of conduct based on the forced retention of 
more primitive conditions and ideals, this has been, and 
still is, one of the heaviest drawbacks to human progress. 
Fortunately for us the general mass of our conduct is 
resultant from natural causes, rather than personal. 
We are forced upward from century to century by 


24 HUMAN WORK 


changing conditions, whether we will or not. The tempt- 
ing island and sheltered waterway evolved from us the 
boat, and the boat grew and spread mightily and 
changed the fate of nations. Under its influence man 
widened and thickened in social intercourse, and became 
wise and friendly in practice, long before his conscious 
ideals of conduct were anything but ignorant and 
savage. 

Steam communication has united modern peoples 
faster than all religions, joining land to land in bands 
of iron, and the biting edges of the nations must wear 
smooth under the wheels. A Russian railroad track 
comes to the edge of Germany, with a different gauge 
from the German road which continues it, but the rail- 
road is stronger than Czar or Emperor, and makes ulti- 
mately for peace. 

Our constantly increasing facilities for communi- 
cation are social functions, evolved in the human race 
on natural lines, and they bring different character and 
conduct long before the popular mind has understood 
their meaning and consciously adopted their results. 
As an effect of changed conditions our conduct to-day is 
at the grade required by steam and electric commu- 
nication; but as far as that conduct springs from 
personal judgment and will we are still in the sailing- 
vessel period, some even in that of the slave-rowed 
galley. 

Every line of social evolution makes for peace to- 
day, for smooth and rapid growth of international 
agreement; but our personally modified conduct, rest- 


CHAPTER TWO 25 


ing as it does on very ancient ideals and traditions, still 
drives us into war. Man’s personal conduct has never, 
as a whole, been up to the level of his socially evolved 
conduct. Note how the development of industry and 
commerce lifted and lightened Europe, leading on to 
peace, to education, to freedom; and how all the while 
the dominant ideals and conscious efforts of the same 
people were all for war, its highly prized glories and its 
supposed gains. See, when learning began to lift its 
head as a great social factor in those dark ages, how the 
proud knight still boasted that he could not read or 
write—mere priestcraft, much beneath him. Quite 
late in English history it was held derogatory for the 
nobility to spell well, these baser arts were for their in- 
feriors. In more recent times we can see as plainly how 
the advance of women, their fuller education and gen- 
eral development, a most important step in social evo- 
lution, has been as earnestly opposed by the great 
majority of persons, acting under the dominance 
of long-held lines of hereditary ideas and supersti- 
tions. 

It would seem here as if man were a most undesirable 
factor in social evolution; as if he acted solely as a 
brake on the wheels of progress, always seeking to 
maintain previous conditions, and to modify conduct 
retroactively. We can easily see how this deterrent po- 
sition is taken by us. Our range of perception depends 
on our brain. The brain is an organ, transmitted with 
hereditary modification like any other organ, and that 
hereditary modification is of course resultant from 


26 HUMAN WORK 


earlier conditions. The older the modifying conditions 
the deeper the modification; racial habits of unbroken 
centuries are not to be offset by one lifetime’s change. 
So we look out upon the world through an ancestral 
brain which is far more responsive to simple primitive 
stimuli than to the more subtle combinations of the 
present; witness the absurd delight of modern man in 
hunting. 

By this inheritance we find it easier to enjoy, approve 
of, understand, and uphold that which has been than 
that which is; to say nothing of that which is to be. 
Nevertheless the brain is of most easily modifiable struc- 
ture, and, of itself, shares in the uplifting pressure to- 
ward higher development. Each child should bring to 
the race a little more brain capacity, a little more in- 
clination to progress, and no doubt he does. But this 
tendency to new power of thought and breadth of 
vision, which is ours in every child by virtue of social 
evolution, is heavily offset by the parental action, by 
our conscious contribution to our own conduct. 

Nothing is firmer in our minds than the concept of 
parental duty; an instinct of primitive force and 
cumulative development. Parental duty involves educa- 
tion, and education, as previously grasped by man’s 
consciousness, has been one of the most retroactive of 
social forces as well as one of the most beneficial. 

It is a simple physiological law that the impressions 
first received are keener and deeper than those of later 
years. Thus each old person carries a memory of better 
things in his youth; not that they were better in 


CHAPTER TWO Q7 


any way, but that his machinery was fresher and took 
stronger impression. Owing to this the teaching of the 
aged has always harked back to the superiority of the 
past—their youth, and deprecated the decadence of the 
present—their age. It is the measure of personal life 
erroneously applied to racial life. Under its pressure 
has sprung one of the most universal of our folk-myths, 
the legend of a Heroic Past. 

The diminutive size and narrow experiences of a child 

make the events of youth seem larger than those of 
maturity. The aging brain, as it weakens in recent 
memories of what a large experience makes small events, 
recurs vividly to those important records of its youth, 
and thus naturally cherishes this conviction of the real 
superiority of those early days. The long life and wide 
range of impression of the human being give a broad 
field for this natural assumption, and the power of 
speech makes the assumption transmissible. 
An ancient bear may fondly imagine that in his 
youth he did more glorious deeds than the enfeebled de- 
scendants he sees around him; but if he does think so, 
he cannot discourage them with his delusions. An an- 
cient man could and did! 

The education of the young is necessarily in the 
hands of their elders; and youth, with no knowledge or 
experience of its own, cannot conclusively deny, or even 
ably criticise, the statements made by the aged. This 
pride of the past, so manifest in the old, is not so in- 
jurious to-day. Recognised as a physical phenomenon, 
offset by wider knowledge of the facts, and with ac- 


28 HUMAN WORK 


cessible records to give immutable proof that our en- 
vironment has not shrunk in the least since we were 
young, this natural tendency of waning brain power 
does small harm. In our racial babyhood it did enor- 
mous harm. There was no record then to dispute with 
grandpa as to the number of wolves he had slain, or 
just how big were the nuts on the towering trees of 
his infancy. | 

So the Superior Past tradition was hammered hard 
into the unprotected infant brain, and took fast hold of 
it, wore deep furrows in it, set that habit of thought so 
rigidly in the mind of the race that it has taken all 
these unnumbered ages for a shouting universe to con- 
vince us that life is Growth! Only a few of us can see it 
even now. Deep down below our modern learning still 
may be found this basic assumption that things were 
better once—this recurring wish to go “ back to na- 
ture,” or back to handicrafts, or back to something or 
another—so sure are we in our sub-soil minds that 
Heaven is behind us! 

All this reversionary habit of old brains would have 
been offset by the “‘ tendency to vary” in young ones; 
by the steady uplift of each new generation; but for 
the cumulative weight of our conscious efforts at edu- 
cation. Education, necessarily traditional at first, and 
instilling tremendous veneration for the ever-receding 
past,—especially in those earliest years when memory 
was the only record of events,—has steadily met the ex- 
pansive tendencies of each new brain by the repressive 
weight of all foregoing centuries. The development of 


CHAPTER TWO 29 


new brain tissue, and its expanding cellular arrange- 
ment, urges constantly to new discovery, and to a re- 
arrangement of earlier impressions, but education has 
diligently endeavoured to enforce upon each brain pre- 
cisely that mass and order of impression considered as 
beneficial in the past. To re-impress forever the same 
facts in the same relation, and to severely discourage 
and prohibit any reconsideration of this supply, has 
been for ages our method of education. 

How seriously this has interfered with our progress 
it is impossible to say. We know that in spite of it 
the brain has developed in more normal lines under the 
beneficent action of genetic social forces. A growing 
industry preached peace to us while church, and state, 
and school were yet preaching war. Social unity and 
organic relation are forced upon our consciousness by 
the facts, while education still hands down the individ- 
ualistic concepts of far earlier times. 

Even in the most rigidly repressed of all lines of 
growth, the moral perceptions, we can see how social 
evolution has developed the soul of man in direct op- 
position to religious traditions. A given stage of 
brain development is capable of formulating only such 
and such moral concepts—of postulating only such and 
such a perception of God. 

The current apprehension of God in a given age is 
accepted as final and forced upon the consciousness of 
each succeeding age, thus tending to preserve a neces- 
sarily inferior standard, and, in preserving it, to 
check any brain growth tending to its contradiction. 


30 HUMAN WORK 


This is one of the most conspicuous and persistent of 
man’s efforts to modify conduct. Faithfully and con- 
scientiously he had striven to maintain the innocent 
errors of his racial youth as guides to succeeding ages. 
With every gathered force of established religion, with 
the growing pressure of education, with the tremendous 
sanction of parental government, man has always 
striven to preserve the religious limits of his remote 
ancestors. 

And yet, in spite of all the allied forces of conscious 
humanity, the evolution of brain tissue went on; the 
new brains saw larger glimpses of truth and trans- 
mitted what they saw to others; those who had ears to 
hear heard, and the world’s religions have grown and 
spread under genetic forces, in the face of opposition, 
persecution, and execution based on telic forces. A 
clearer and sadder illustration of the attitude of man as 
a factor in social evolution need not be asked. All that 
he could do he has done to throttle progress and stop 
the growth of his own soul; and this under a sublime 
conviction of virtue. 

In scientific progress, in artistic development, along 
all the lines of human growth, we find the majority 
acting as obstructionists; always valiantly upholding 
that-which-has-been, and maintaining, as respectable 
pterodactyls, that mud of a proper consistency is far 
superior as a vehicle of life to the untried vicissitudes 
of air. Is it then to be supposed that social evolution | 
would have got along faster without our conscious cere- 
bration? That we might have slid peacefully up the 


CHAPTER TWO 31 


ladder with our eyes shut, instead of struggling on in 
our toad-in-the-well fashion—up three steps and down 
two? Surely not. The very fact that this power to 
alter conduct marks the highest stage of animal evolu- 
tion proves its value. Nature does not make such huge 
mistakes as to introduce and maintain an injurious 
function. 

We must remember, too, as against the deterrent 
drag of the majority, the grand uplift of the few; the 
power never yet measured by which the conscious life of 
one man can inspire and lift and stimulate the others. 
Again and again we see the whole race seized and 
pushed on by some dominant individual life, the cur- 
rents of whose action vibrate unceasingly through the 
mass, and stir it to better growth. 

When man does by some blessed chance go with the 
forces of evolution, and uses his conscious power to re- 
sist the downpull of old habit, and the opposition of 
his past-ridden fellows, he becomes an immense accel- 
erating power. By the aid of his racial memory he 
can see where a new age brings us to the same danger- 
signals that we ignored in the past, and learn to avoid 
them. Man’s vast stretch of consciousness, made per- 
manent and accessible to all by the arts, especially the 
art of literature, gives him the advantage of well-nigh 
limitless experience. 

Our irrevocable past, exposed before us all in the in- 
creasing light of knowledge, is not a thing to worship 
and to follow, but a record of splendour and of warn- 
ing, of deep humility, of patience, and of hope. Our 


32 HUMAN WORK 


power to postulate a future, to erect hypotheses on 
which to work, gives us another advantage over the un- 
conscious products of evolution. We have yesterday to 
learn from, and to-morrow to plan for, and these two 
give a far broader basis of action than the passing ex- 
perience of to-day. Our ability to modify conduct, so 
painfully proven by our successful repressive measures, 
will have even greater effect when we work with the 
upward tendencies, instead of against them. 

So far the attitude of the race towards its own van- 
guard—the young—has been that of a heavy old gen- 
tleman throwing himself solidly down on an active child, 
and seeking to smother him and pin him to the earth. 
Being larger and heavier than the child, he seriously in- 
terfered with his normal activity. But when this size 
and weight is turned to account to help and not hinder, 
when, instead of piling the dead years on the quivering 
young brain of the child, we set ourselves as a bulwark 
to keep the past off him—then we shall see surprising 
progress. We have but to gain a clear idea of what 
the natural lines of social evolution are, and cease our 
opposition, to make large and healthy increase in our 
growth. ) 

Nowhere is this better shown than in the rapid im 
provement of education to-day. Instead of a mere 
transmission of what people used to believe, the young 
mind is set to find out what is to be known, helped by a 
large array of carefully tested facts, and the best ma- 
chinery of latest inventors. The laboratory method, 
to learn by experiment, to test by proof—this is the 


CHAPTER TWO 33 


modern system; as against the blind belief in change- 
less traditions that held us back so long. The edu- 
cator of to-day seeks to develop the brain by exercis- 
ing all its powers—not to fill and seal it like a preserve 
jar. 

That superstitious respect for the aged which dis- 

tinguishes China is giving way to a respect for wis- 
dom, for knowledge, for judgment, and ability where- 
ever manifested; and if we swing too far toward honour 
for the young, it is a healthy extreme to counterbalance 
the huge and heavy back action of the past. The mind 
of man is now being opened to perceptions of facts as 
he finds them, rather than the retention of old stories, 
and is exercised more in free, responsible action during 
its early years. 
_ We are beginning to learn now something of the 
true history of our race—what we rose from, and how 
we have risen; what forces urged us most, what con- 
ditions helped us most. We are seeing with increasing 
clearness the desirable lines of action, and how best to 
follow them. Alert, intelligent, and active among the 
great currents of social evolution, we can do much to 
promote their effects. Here we can let them alone, there 
we can oppose our allied wills against some eddy of re- 
versionary tendency, or check the growth of some dis- 
advantageous excess; we can use our consciousness to 
choose between the varying forces, and such individual 
power as we possess to steer among them. 

To see our line of progress, to see the tremendous 
currents that push us upward and take advantage of 


34 HUMAN WORK 


them; to see also the pitfalls and stumbling-blocks, the 
reaction and inertia to which mere genetic progress is 
exposed; and then to use our telic energy to assist 
nature and go farther—that will make man a far more 
useful factor in social evolution. | 


wees CONCEPT AND CONDUCT 
Summary 


Human evolution. New faculties and imstincts. Hgo- 
‘istic concept useful to individual animal.  Disad- 
vantage of outgrown ideals. Persistence of social rudi- 
ments explained. Need of social scrap-heap. Social 
relations psychic. Despot only a concept. Concepts 
internal environment. Shipwreck and character. Ma- 
ternal and sex instinct and concepts. Negro hero, 
power of concept on conduct. Man’s efforts to check 
his growth. Prejudice a physical brain condition. 
Healthy brain must be used. Virtue of “ believing.” 
Natural organic tendency to consistency,—how per- 
verted. Belief m luck. Charades. Basic concepts 
wrong. Superior-past traditions. Ancestor worship. 
Fanaticism. Forced inconsistency. Concepts antedate 
facts. French Revolution. Slavery. Undertow of old 
brain habits. Increase of social convenience. Brain as 
developed by natural selection, by social selection. Ap- 
parent injustice. Individual hunter. On his own head. 
Mistakes most possible mn highest grades. Peasant 
grade always preserved. Rub out and do over. Society 
the best culture for fools. Present concepts m eco- 
nomics, primitive, false, injurious. Ego concept. If 
bees were “idiots.” | 


Ii! 
CONCEPT AND CONDUCT 


Hvman evolution involves the development of a number 
of individual animals into specialised functionaries of 
organic social life. This requires the gradual assump- 
tion of new faculties, new desires, new instincts, and 
new activities ; and the gradual disuse and discarding of 
older ones. ‘The egoistic mental make-up of a solitary 
animal, of a low savage, of any reversionary self-sup- 
porting human hermit, is advantageous to him as a 
separate creature; but disadvantageous to a society to 
which he might become attached, and, if he was so at- 
tached, to himself. 

A given society, in any age, possesses certain dom- 
inant ideas and feelings proper to it; and the individ- 
uals manifesting most of those ideas and feelings are 
most beneficial to that society and so to themselves. 
But if members of a given society persist in maintain- 
ing and acting upon social ideals of a previous age, 
they are injurious to their society and so to themselves. 
Social evolution, in any given place and time, is visibly 
checked by the number of persons who do not keep up 
with it; but insist on feeling and thinking after long- 
past standards, and trying to act on that basis. 

This peculiar persistence of social rudiments in all 
stages of our progress requires some special explanation. 

37 


38 HUMAN WORK 

When a given social process, once useful, then useless, 
then increasingly injurious, continues to force itself 
upon a growing civilisation, there must be some strong 
agency to account for it. Naturally, it would have 
been gradually elimimated by proven undesirability, as 
cartwheels of solid wood were eliminated. In our ma- 
terial development we have moved steadily on, growing 
into ever newer and better methods, simplifying, cheap- 
ening, quickening, easing, following nature’s methods 
exactly—the conservation of energy—the line of least 
resistance. Our American industrial supremacy is at- 
tributed to precisely this willingness to grow, to discard 
the old things, to our constant resort to the scrap-heap. 
But in social development we seem to have no scrap- 
heap, or never to use one unless compelled to, making 
history a sort of sacred junk-shop. 

In business life, that is, in its material processes, we 
eagerly accept the new. Im social life, in all our social 
processes, we piously, valiantly, obdurately, maintain 
the old. 

Why? 

Because of the peculiar effect of the human brain on 
human action—the relation between concept and con- 
duct. In adaptation to our physical environment, 
whether the original face of nature, or the latest in- 
ventions in mechanics, we have material relations to 
deal with, and have learned how. 

Social relations are psychic. That a steel spade is 
better than a wooden one is easily proven to the hand 
and eye. That a democracy is better than a despotism 


CHAPTER THREE 39 


is not so simple a proposition. The laws of the hy- 
draulic press are established by visible experiment ; but 
the laws of the distribution of wealth work in another 
medium, and are more difficult to establish. 

Society is a psychic condition; all social relations’ 
exist and grow in the human mind. That one despot 
can rule over a million other men rests absolutely on 
their state of mind. They believe that he does; let 
them change their minds, and he does not. As a human 
animal the despot is of such size, weight, colour—he is a 
physical fact. As a Despot—he is but a psychical 
fact—he exists as a Despot only in the minds of men. 
(This is not Christian Science, but sociological science. ) 
He is a concept, a common concept, acting under which 
all men do thus and thus; outgrowing which, they dis- 
card their Despot and adopt some other political belief. 

In pre-social planes of evolution we do not find this 
factor in determining conduct. Earlier forms of life 
reacted directly to conditions and were modified by 
them. Man reacts to external conditions as do other 
animals, but also he acts according to these special inner 
conditions—his ideas. The power to form and retain 
concepts, and act under their influence precisely as if 
they were facts, is what gives the element of special 
progress and also of perversity to human conduct. 
This internal environment, the general furnishing of a 
man’s brain, and more particularly its basic concepts, 
do more to determine his action than does external en- 
vironment. His reaction to external conditions is modi- 
fied by these internal conditions; unless you know them 


40 HUMAN WORK 


you cannot predict the result; unless you change them 
you cannot change the result. 

Present the same conditions of shipwreck to aatlor: 
of different nationalities, and see how widely they dif- 
fer in conduct. A crew of Chinamen, wild with terror 
or in a stupor of fatalism, show no discipline or cour- 
age, they can scarce save themselves. A crew of the 
Latin race, as was so lamentably shown in the wreck of 
the Bourgogne, seek frantically to save themselves, at 
the expense of passengers, women, and children. A 
crew of English or Americans show self-control, re- 
source, courage. They save first the women and chil- 
dren and the passengers, last themselves. If there is no 
escape they preserve their discipline to the last, as in 
the crew of the Victoria going down to death in per- 
fect order, to the sound of music. 

Even under that imminent pressure, the most direct 
modifying force in nature, the fear of death—the action 
of the human being depends more upon his character, 
that is, upon the sum of his concepts and consequent 
habits, than on the present environment. Maternal in- 
stinct is one of the strongest and most deep-seated in 
nature, but under the action of certain religious con- 
cepts, mothers have given their babies to Moloch or to 
the Ganges. The sex instinct is of incalculable force, 
but under the action of certain concepts men and 
women have been known to stultify it absolutely in vol- 
.untary celibacy. 

An excellent proof of the power of concepts com- 
pared with conditions is given in the heroism of Wil- 


CHAPTER THREE 4] 


liam Phelps, the Indianapolis negro. Two coloured men 
were at work in a great boiler, riveting. Some person 
by accident turned on the steam. Hot steam as a ma- 
terial condition is quite forcible, and the two men 
started for the ladder. But Phelps, who was foremost, 
was arrested by a concept. He stepped back, saying 
to the other, ** You go first—you’re married!” Even in 
that comparatively undeveloped brain, a group of con- 
cepts as to Duty and Honour were stronger modifiers 
of conduct than boiling steam. 

This power of directing action by concepts is at once 
our great advantage and disadvantage. If the con- 
cepts are true, if they are founded on fact and in ac- 
cordance with law, they promote advantageous con- 
duct; if they are false, they promote disadvantageous 
conduct. Even if once true, that is, as true as the 
brains of a given period, acting on the knowledge of 
that period, could comprehend, they become mischie- 
vous if not changed to suit the larger brains and 
larger knowledge of a later time. As shown in the 
previous chapter, this is precisely our difficulty. We are 
always being hindered by our back-acting brain. So- 
ciety progresses far more rigidly than our recognition 
of it. The acts and facts of to-day continually diverge 
from the concepts of yesterday. 

History exhibits an endless series of man’s efforts to 
check his own growth. Patient, persistent, ingenious, 
devout, he has laboured incessantly to stay where he 
was—where he used to be; and is continually astonished 
to find himself still in motion and going upward. In 


42 HUMAN WORK 


dealing with the average human brain, these deterrent 
forces are constantly met; the mere physical resistance — 
to a new process. of thought; and a conscious, yes, and 
conscientious, resistance to a concept not in accordance 
with the previous supply. 

That common resistance to progress called prejudice 
is a physical brain condition. Certain ideas are early 
formed, usually under strong pressure, and no further 
action is taken on that subject, no admission of new 
ideas, no examination of what is already there. This 
inactive area dwindles in disuse, is ill-nourished because 
unused, becomes stiff and feeble; and it is exceedingly 
difficult to make any fresh impression on the neglected 
part. When another person does try to arouse thought 
in that locality, to explain, convince, persuade, en- 
lighten, he is confronted with this sae inert mass we 
call a prejudice. 

Prejudices are stronger and more extensive among 
the ignorant, because the brain is so little used in any 
part that the clogged areas spread and thicken undis- 
turbed for generations. ‘The lumpy brain is trans- 
mitted in turn to the young, and the false ideas 
promptly reinserted during each child’s defenceless in- 
fancy, so that in time a formidable obstacle to progress 
is developed, called race-prejudice. The more learned 
are not absolutely free from prejudice, only relatively 
sO in comparison with the more ignorant. In what- 
ever portion of the brain we do not actively think, we 
find an accumulating tendency to prejudice. 

A healthy and active brain, used to free movement 


CHAPTER THREE 43 


and clear connection, is affronted by any inert mass 
among its vital processes, as a housekeeper is affronted 
by some mouldy heap in a disused closet and cleans it 
out energetically. Old and familiar subjects are more 
heavily clogged in this way than those more recent 
and less known, yet prejudices will form, if allowed, 
even on the most recent of sciences. A brain, like any 
other organ, must be frequently and fully used to kee 

it healthy. ; 

These natural tendencies of the brain, the inertia of 
habit and the local stiffening of prejudice, would not be 
so injurious if left to the healthy counteracting in- 
fluence of equally natural tendencies to growth. But 
the passive resistance has been rendered active and in- 
finitely multiplied in power by the conscious brain action 
which has so mistakenly exalted its worst faculties, and 
choked the growth of its best ones. 

We very early made it the highest test of virtue to. 
believe what we could not understand; i. é., to hold by 
main force an unassimilated idea, like a stone in the 
stomach; and an equal test of sin to presume to examine 
this irritating mass. 

The organic method is to relate each perception to 
those previously received. The brain is of its own 
nature logical. Impressions made upon it are sorted 
and stored in definite connection. This may be noted in 
ordinary conversation, as when the hearer discovers 
that the stream of talk he understood to concern Jane 
was really about Mary. ‘“ Oh!” says he, with a sense 
of physical un-ease as of one who has stepped down 


44 HUMAN WORK 


where there was no step, “I thought you were talking 
about Jane!” and there is a pause while he hastily 
pulls out all those statements from group “ Jane” in 
his mind, and rearranges them in group “ Mary.” 

By this natural power of relating impressions, called 
consistency, we are able to form a connected scheme of 
things and work rationally thereunder. If any of 
these impressions are incorrect, it leads to further error ; 
and if the false impressions be those of main impor- 
tance, the whole fabric of mental association will be 
wrong. | 

Thus a belief in luck necessarily tends to underrate 
mere knowledge—study, accuracy. The woman who 
says she “ has no luck with her bread ” is not likely to 
go to a cooking school. Take the full extension of this 
same concept about luck—chance—fate—and you get 
fatalism, the logical consequence of which is seen in 
those backward and inert nations where it rules. They 
may make good fighters, but never good inventors—dis- 
coverers—creators ; they endure life, but do not pro- 
mote its development. Religious history gives us 
plenty of “ awful examples ” of the power of one radi- 
cally wrong concept to fill the mind with error, and 
the world with blood and tears. 

Our disinclination to accept a statement which does 
not agree with those previously held is the brain’s 
physical rejection of an impression claiming to belong 
to a certain group, but finding no connection there. If 
forced to accept it as incontrovertibly true, we must 
then throw out all the others and wholly rearrange that 


CHAPTER THREE 45 


group of concepts. This is where we say “ Ah! that 
alters the case,” when some patent fact forces us to 
*“‘ change our minds.” 

If forced to accept facts indisputably true, but as 
far as we can see irreconcilable, there can be no mental 
action whatever on that subject. They are held by 
force in the brain, but do not grow there and do not 
lead to any further grouping of concepts. This state 
of mind is familiar to the guessers of charades. ‘* My 
first is this,” “‘ my second is that ”—‘* my whole is so 
and so”’—and the brain seizes these detached assertions 
and seeks for some possible arrangement in which they 
will “ make sense ”’ as we call it—or else “ gives it up.” 
If the riddle has been misstated, it is impossible to 
guess it. And this is the first great difficulty in what 
has been so long called the riddle of human life—it 
has been misstated. No wonder we have had to give 
it up. 3 

The value of that proper relation of ideas we call 
consistency is this: A brain with all its concepts in 
natural sequence and order transmits energy in a 
smooth, continuous stream. The brain with inconsistent 
concepts, lodged in thought-tight compartments, loses 
energy in cross-currents, contradictions, culs-de-sacs; 
and the resultant conduct is weak and uncertain. Each 
root idea tends to modify conduct its way; and if the 
root ideas do not agree neither does the conduct. Often 
it results in mere inhibition—we see this act to contra- 
dict that—cannot reconcile them—and so do nothing. 
The basic concepts of early man were wrong. His ob- 


46 HUMAN WORK 


servation was necessarily narrow, his deductions most 
partial, his whole position one of repeated errors, as is 
so generally true of all extreme youth. ‘These errors 
of the undeveloped brain would have given way in 
course of normal development to better thinking, as 
the child’s missteps lead on to better walking, but for 
the ill-founded Grandpa theory. 

The traditional superiority of the past, on the 
authority of statements open to no examination and no 
criticism, rapidly developed into ancestor worship and 
that whole great retroactive tendency of thought which 
is still so heavily dominant among us. In it we have 
deified inertia, as best instanced in China. Assuming 
that the crude theories of humanity’s youth were true, 
the brain tried to correlate them; to form some con- 
nected scheme of life based on such premisses. This was 
functionally impossible. No healthy brain could 
> of such postulates as these. As a con- 
sequence, normal brain action on such lines ceased. 
Abnormal brain action developed freely, its extreme 
being what we call fanaticism. Those who attended 
to the maintenance of ancient concepts soon found that 
any increase of mental activity led to the unsettling of 
their supposed truth; and so, with the best of inten- 
_ tions, used every possible means to discourage such ac- 
tivity. | 
And as the average mind found itself forbidden to 
think on certain of the most important lines in life, 
and unable to think logically on such bases as were — 
allowed, it simply accepted them as ** unthinkable ” and 


** make sense’ 


CHAPTER THREE 47 


so admitted in the common stock of ideas these discon- 
nected heaps of arbitrary statement. Our natural tend- 
ency to relate and connect our percepts and concepts 
in logical sequence, so as to form a rational collection 
agreeing with itself and with our behaviour, has been 
not only neglected but prevented; and this arbitrary 
disconnection of mental processes has been so thorough 
and universal that we have grown to expect what we 


> in human action. 


call * inconsistency ” 
- Yet consistency is one of the brain’s most essential 
laws. We expect things to be consistent, we demand it. 
Talk disconnectedly to the most ordinary person and he 
soon cries, ‘‘ What on earth are you talking about? I 
don’t see what that has to do with it!” And we all 
know how busy our brains are, trying to make out to 
ourselves that our own conduct is consistent. We are 
naturally consistent, but the unbroken centuries of vio- 
lent insertion and compulsory retention of irreconcil- 
able statements in the young brain have perverted 
natural action and trained us in an artificial incon- 
sistency. 

This enforced maintenance of older concepts has for 
its result this: At any given period in history the ideas 
of the common mind are found to antedate the facts. 
The facts of the twentieth century are approached with 
the ideas, feelings, prejudices of the tenth. And as 
our conscious acts are modified by those ancient con- 
cepts, our acts are necessarily behind the times. Chang- 
ing conditions constantly demand revision of the con- 
duct of society, but if that conduct—so far as it is 


48 HUMAN WORK 

consciously ours—is based on unchanging ideas, there 
must be conflict. ‘There has been, always. ‘Take some 
well-known historic instance, as the French Revolu- 
tion. 

Here was a long-established social relation, that of 
feudalism, lineal descendant of still remoter patriarchal 
grouping, producing in the conscious mind a highly 
developed concept or group of concepts, described in 
the phrase, “l’ancien régime.” Meanwhile the condi- 
tions which made feudalism an advantageous form of 
social relation changed intrinsically. The natural 
basis in fact was gone, but the idea remained firmly in- 
trenched in the mind. Acting under the idea, feudalism 
was maintained, but the change in conditions proceeded 
irresistibly. 

Some few there were whose minds consciously per- 
ceived the change in conditions, formed new concepts, 
and sought to transmit those concepts. But this effort 
was on the one hand too limited in range, and on the 
other too vague and varied in form, to really bring 
about the change, or wisely guide it. The action of 
the cruel facts on a no longer normal social relation, 
resulted in a vast reaction, quite uncontrollable by the 
newer ideals. 

The endeavour to reconstruct society on the theory 
of the “ social contract,” or any other then advanced, 
naturally failed, as the endeavour to maintain an out- 
worn system failed, and the carnage and confusion, the 
partial reaction to the old basis, the slow, irregular, 
fumbling progress toward a better state were the re- 


CHAPTER THREE 49 


sults, as we have seen. ‘That conduct which led to the 
improvement of the social system in France was re- 
sultant from conditions. and not from concepts. 

In our own recent experience with the system of 
human slavery we have another marked instance, both 
in the irresistible trend of progressive conditions which 
brought the change and in the splendid effort to alter 
those governing concepts on which the system rested in 
the minds of men. In the abolition movement we have 
the conscious human effort to alter conscious conduct. 
The physical extension of our national boundaries and 
the mechanical extension of economic processes was the 
unconscious pressure of conditions which also modi- 
fied conduct. And against both stood the vast weight 
of brain inertia, and the unending array of false con- 
cepts, dating back to the historic period when slavery 
was a useful relation, and buttressing itself with 
the crudest quotations from ancient religions. 

The power of the freely developing brain to keep 
pace with new social relations and proclaim newly 
perceived truth. is offset by the tremendous undertow of 
the undeveloped brain and its power to compel ac- 
ceptance of ancient errors. 

In a long-range view of social progress it would seem 
that in early times the conscious mind had a very small 
share in our development, and that conditions did 
almost all, even while man fondly thought that he did; 
but as society grows and the brain grows in spite of 
itself, the balance of power swings steadily toward 
conscious conduct. A broader religion and a fuller edu- 


50 HUMAN WORK 


cation make the formation and transmission of ideas 
continually easier; and personal freedom so accustoms 
us to handle our own conduct that the power of hu- 
manity to consciously improve its world is now a large 
and growing factor in social evolution. 

This carries its visible proof in the increasing ac- 
tivity of our interest in social phenomena, and of our 
efforts to alleviate the distress of humanity and better 
those conditions within our reach. We have the power 
and the desire to help, and the main obstacle to a swift 
and orderly improvement is in the brain; both in its 
passive ignorance and prejudice and its active main- 
tenance of mistaken or long-outgrown ideas. 

The position here taken, that the human brain has 
not kept pace with the development of society, and has 
acted as a deterrent rather than an assistant to our 
growth, may be questioned from the point of view of 
the evolutionist. Natural selection, he will assert, de- 
velops in each animal a brain capacity suited to his 
needs, and speedily removes him from the field of con- 
test if he does not manifest it; man in the struggle for 
existence must similarly develop the kind and amount 
of brain that is necessary to him, and if he does not he 
will perish. Therefore the human brain to-day is all 
that can be expected, and it is useless to talk of any 
wholesale and sudden improvement in social conditions 
from that source. 

This would be true if man were a creature whose’ 
existence was conditioned upon his own individual 
activities. While the human animal remained at that 


CHAPTER THREE 51 


stage of development where he was directly reached 
by the consequences of his own personal conduct, his 
brain power was cultivated in this simple way; if he 
was not smart enough to live, he died, and was well 
out of the procession. 

But so soon as any social relation was established, 
when our gains and losses were fused in collective 
action, this method of brain culture was no longer 
reliable. Once firmly established as a living species 
through the process of agriculture, the degree of intel- 
ligence necessary to the maintenance of this process 
was sufficient to sustain life, while the further develop- 
ment of intelligence rested on other activities less in- 
stantly important to the life process, and not so sharply 
brought home in personal consequences. 

The individual hunter, if he failed to show the grade 
of ability necessary to supply his wants, promptly died 
of his own inferiority, but man, in social relation, is — 
maintained by the collective effort, prospering or suf- 
fering with his society, and his pooling of abilities 
is so far-reaching and hopelessly intermixed that it is 
impossible to pick out the consequences of one man’s 
action and pile them neatly on his own head. Naturally, 
selection acts on the society rather than the man, and 
must needs act slowly and with an appearance of in- 
justice. Incipient errors are not met by the sharp 
reproof of individual consequence, and wide ranges of 
eccentricity are possible, so that they do not touch 
those basic economic processes of society on which all 
our lives rest. 


52 HUMAN WORK 


Gross mistakes in agriculture would be soon punished 
by the extinction of the mistaken society, or errors in 
mechanics, in navigation, in any part of our work 
which deals with the primal necessities of life, but errors — 
in astronomy, in religion, or education do not result in 
such immediate destruction. 

Thus the human intellect on the lower stages shows 
a certain solid average ability, built up by natural selec- 
tion acting on societies as it acts on individuals, but 
the human intellect in its higher grades is painfully 
irregular and defective, making our higher social mani- 
festations as questionable, uncertain, and often mis- 
chievous as our lower ones are clearly good. 

Man has stayed alive because he knew enough to 
plough and sow, to kill wolves and steer a ship, but in 
later social development he has been as open to de- 
struction as any poor beast below him. In the long 
lesson of history we may see him again and again killed 
down to the level of his intelligence. Nations have 
been conquered, civilisations destroyed, kings decapi- 
tated, but the peasant survived. | 

The problems we have really solved do not have to be 
done over again; the downfall of past societies is but 
the wiping off the slate of a mass of elaborate failures. 
“Rule it all out down to that first line and begin 
again!” says the teacher. 

We are quite clever at simple examples in units, but 
very weak on fractions. We could see how one man 
affected another in the short radius of a limited early 
group, but the long-range effects of our widening inter- 


CHAPTER THREE 53 


human activities have been beyond us, and we are slowly 
working out in heavy centuries those problems of 
liberty and justice, of honesty and love, the mastery 
of which is as essential to our further progress as was 
the early mastery of metallurgy and mechanics. 

A mistake in short and simple addition is easily seen, 
but as the examples grow more complex the errors are 
more difficult to trace. 

They spread wider and last longer, and by the time 
a society begins to meet the punishment due to the 
behaviour of its misguided constituents, those worthies 
have long since died in the odour of sanctity and a new 
generation is piously producing the incipient errors 
which will destroy its grandchildren. The vigour of 
our basic life processes sustains us through wide 
reaches of experiments and mistakes. 

A flourishing society can maintain more fools than 
any savage period could afford. 


We have to do in this book with several of the basic 
errors in our common concepts as to economics. We 
shall see how different are the facts of our economic life 
to-day from that inner world of concepts we carry in 
the brain and always take for facts while they remain 
there. The world is, to us, the sutn of our concepts 
concerning it; and while the real facts relentlessly 
affect us, our supposed facts are of deadly importance 
because they modify our conduct. 

In the field of economics we maintain to this day 
some of the most primitive ideas, some of the most 


2 HUMAN WORK 

radically false ideas, some of the most absurd ideas @ 
brain can hold. They do not fit the facts; they are 
not provable as true, but very promptly provable as 
false; they do not agree with such true ideas as we 
have, nor even with each other; but all this gives no 
uneasiness to the average brain. That long-suffering 
organ has been trained for more thousands of years 
than history can uncover to hold in unquestioning 
patience great blocks of irrelevant idiocy and large 
active lies. 

In the face of every century’s accumulating facts 
of organic social relation we have peacefully main- 
tained our original animal theory of individualism— 
the Ego concept. If bees had brains like ours, and 
the exquisitely organised modern bee could consciously 
maintain the state of mind of her remote prototype, 
the solitary bee, we might have some parallel to com- 
fort our lonely height of foolishness. Well did the 
Greeks call an “idiot” the man who behaved as a 
separate individual and considered his personal ad- 
vantage first. Consider the ruin and disorder of the 
hive if bees were “idiots.” That type of industry, 
of harmony, of peaceful wealth, could never have 
arisen under such misconception. | 

We have many more root concepts, some basic, some 
collateral and derivative; all working, discordantly 
enough, against social progress. Several will be 
touched upon here; those most patently connected with 
the subject of the book, our Human Work. In pur- 
suance of which subject it is necessary to lay down 


CHAPTER THREE 55 


some of the facts as to the nature of society, its struc- 
ture and functions; and to show how perverse, how 
inadequate, how deadly mischievous are the ancient 
theories which still stand in our minds in place of those 
facts. 


IV: SOME FALSE CONCEPTS 
Summary 


The ego concept, based on pre-human status. Our 
separate consciousness not human. Human conscious- 
ness collective. “We” human, “I” animal. Ab- 
surdity of individualism m organism. Pleasure m 
impression theory. Animal basis. Pleasure through 
motory nerves as well as sensory, and in us far greater. 
Pay Concept, animal basis, logical extremes in Heaven 
and Hell. Other forces also operative. Woman labour. 
Slave labour. Shame and agony resultant in concepts 
of eternal torture. Wage labour. Want theory. 
Self-interest theory. Self-preservation not nature’s 
first law. Race-preservation. Pain concept: “ Sweet 
uses of adversity.” Action and reaction equal. 
“Good to be born poor.” Pain only a message, always 
indicative of wrong. Defensive torture. Hazing. 
Evils of poverty. Abraham Lincoln. Illegitimate 
wealth. Dumbbells not dinner. Contempt for work, 
how derived. Veblen. Paradox of “independence.” 
Law of demand and supply. 


TRV 
SOME FALSE CONCEPTS 


As we shall frequently have to refer to certain major 
errors in popular thought, it will be as well to clearly 
enumerate and describe those selected. The field is 
wide,—each of those mentioned connects with many 
others,—and there may be serious question as to which 
antedates which; but difference on that point will not 
invalidate the actuality of their influence on conduct. 
The group mentioned in this chapter will be further 
described and elaborated later; this is merely to intro- 
duce them in some order for reference. 

The first, and here assumed to be the basic error in 
the human mind, the parent of almost all the others, 
is the Ego concept. This is the universal assumption, 
based on a pre-human status when it was true, that 
human beings are separate entities, like the lower 
animals. 

As animals we are separate, and, when we first began 
to think, the animal life was so enormously preponder- 
ant, and the human life so weak, so vague, so intermit- 
tently realised, that it was quite natural we should 
carry over the sense of personal entity into the social 
entity. That we have a separate personal conscious- 
ness is not denied, but it is not humanity. The human 
consciousness is collective, as we shall see later, 

59 


60 HUMAN WORK 


Our mistake has been, not in retaining the Ego con- 
cept, which is as necessary in its place as the concept 
of a leg or a liver, but in failing to grasp the larger 
inclusive Social concept. All the complex organic 
phenomena of social life we have continually tried to 
construe in terms of the individual. The distinctive 
features of human life are invariably social. No one 
trait or power of our great race but what must be 
accounted for in its development and understood in its 
use as a social factor. 

“ We” are human, “I” am an animal, save as “ I,” 
being part of Society, embody and represent it. ‘The 
discord and mischief which would be wrought in a phys- 
ical organism by any absurd pretence of individual life © 
and interest on the part of its organs, is precisely the 
discord and misery wrought in our social organism by 
the persistence of this archaic idea. 

Another error, most deeply basic in its logical rela- 
tion, though perhaps not so early recognised by the 
conscious mind, is our general belief that pleasure lies” 
wholly—or even mainly—in impression. Like the first, © 
it dates from a pre-social status, is the governing 
theory of personal animal life, and has not been re- 
moved and replaced by truer views as social life is 
developed. 

The individual animal having no functions but those 
of maintenance, reproduction, and improvement, and 
accomplishing his improvement only along lines of per- 
sonal heredity, acted only toward those ends, and re- 
mained at rest when those ends were served. Pleasure — 


CHAPTER FOUR 61 


led and pain drove him to the attainment of the means 
to these ends of this fulfilment, so he early learned to 
associate pleasure with getting what he wanted,—pain 
with the lack of it,—a perfectly true concept as far as 
it went. But as the individual animal’s activities are 
promptly reactionary, and not matters of conscious 
judgment and volition, he never took into account the 
pleasure inherent in action, in the discharge of energy, 
and the pain equally inherent in the prevention of such 
discharge. 

The nerves bring to us sense of pain and pleasure: 
certain currents feel good to them, certain others bad. 
An inflow of warmth is a pleasure; increase the vibra- 
tion, make it heat, it becomes pain, agony, torture. 
The sensory nerves bring to us their burden of impres- 
sion, the consciousness we call enjoyment or dislike ; but 
have the motory nerves no burden? Are the currents 
of energy going out not as perceptible as those coming 
in? ‘To the individual animal they are not; he does 
not “ feel himself work ” particularly. His conscious- 
ness is in his income, not in his output. 

But the social creature comes under different condi- 
tions. His range of activity increases, both in com- 
plexity and power; he has an enlarging fund of energy 
to discharge and a thousand complicated avenues to 
discharge it through. Moreover, this discharge is no 
longer a personal affair of his own arms and legs, but 
_ Involves concurrent action of many others. 

To adjust rightly this intricate mutual activity 
requires consciousness, and consciousness involves pleas- 


62 HUMAN WORK 


ure and pain. The whole field of distinctively human 
activities is under this law. We have a vast fund of 
energy, a vast field of exercise, and a constantly in- 
creasing consciousness of this exercise. Meanwhile the 
income of man, as a separate animal, remains the same. 
He has, as before, the pleasure of the intake, the at- 
tainment of the means to his separate welfare. He 
has, beyond that, his share of pleasure in the larger 
collective intake also, the gratification of his social 
desires; but he has, pre-eminently, the pleasure of 
action; of the conscious expression of energy. 


This is the largest field of human delight, but has 
not been so recognised. We still commonly associate © 
pleasure with impression, with things we are to get, to — 


have. Whereas, in fact, our pleasure depends far 
more largely upon what we do. 

Closely derived from this basic assumption is our 
general theory of return as an incentive; what we may 
call the Pay concept. This was one of man’s earliest 
generalisations. He observed the excito-motory action 
of the individual beast; under the influence of hunger 
or fear he acts; not influenced, he does not act, sleeps 
in the sun, and accumulates energy for the next jump. 

The beast, seeing his dinner running before him, ran 
after it; having caught his dinner, he ceased to run. 
Seeing his enemy running behind him, he ran away 
from it; having escaped from his enemy, he ceased 
to run. 


“Aha!” cries that astute observer, Early Man, 


**Exertion depends on pleasure before you or pain 


CHAPTER FOUR 63 


behind you!” and he forthwith produced his grand 
primeval generalisation of Reward and Punishment. 

This is still exclusively held by almost all of us. We 
have used it to account for all human actions, with the 
bitter conclusion that ‘* every man has his price.” We 
have spread and lengthened and deepened it to cover 
our waxing field of action, till out of its logical ex- 
tremes we have built both Heaven and Hell. 

It was a tremendous concept for the early brain to 
- achieve, and it was true—as far as it went. These 
two forces do modify action. They were very strong 
upon individual animals, and they act upon us yet— 
to a degree. That is, there are still some of us so near 
the plane of individualism as to be readily and strongly 
influenced by these agents. 

The error of early man lay in not observing other 
forces even then operative; and the error of modern 
man lies in not observing that these others have grown 
continually, and the primal ones have dwindled in pro- 
portion. 

Right beside our rashly generalising ancestor 
laboured the primeval squaw, working patiently, work- 
ing eagerly, working most efficiently, out of the over- 
flowing energy of the mother instinct, with the power 
of recreative love. Not because of anything to gain 
or anything to fear, but because energy must have ex- 
pression; and the expression is in proportion to the 
energy, not in proportion to the return. Later, in 
the fall of the matriarchate and the inception of our 
dramatic androcentric period, the woman was made a 


64 HUMAN WORK 


slave and her labour became slave labour, not to its 
improvement. Later again men were made slaves; 
their activity was coerced by these two primitive stimuli, 
the fear of punishment, the hope of reward; mainly 
the former. 

In that first period of co-ordinate oe among 
men, the irreconcilable male energy was. forced into 
service by the immediate pressure of pain and fear. 
Slavery was one step short of slaughter, as such ac- 
cepted, as such hated. All that deep-rooted aversion 
to labour—sense of scorn for it, shame in it, honour 
in being free of it—was superimposed upon humanity 
at this period, and has never been fully outgrown. 
This terrible period, its wrong, its shame, its agony, its 
hopelessness, deeply impressed the growing brain of 
man, and, as this period was of great duration, it made 
possible to our minds the prodigious concepts of eternal 
torture. 

Later, in the second stage of coerced action, that of 
wage-labour, we have the reward used instead of the 
penalty. We will not whip the man if he does not 
work, but we will not feed him unless he does. 

Our governing concept being that action is produced 
only by these means, we must needs use one or the other. 
Since we believe that if the slave were not in fear of 
punishment he would not work, or that if the employee 
were not in hope of pay he would not work, we act upon 
our belief consistently enough. We have outgrown 
the period where we believed we had a right to enforce 
labour by inflicting punishment; but we have not out- 


CHAPTER FOUR 65 


grown the only less primitive belief that we have a 
right to enforce it by withholding the reward. We do 
not yet, to any extent, recognise the other forces under 
which human beings act. 

Closely allied to the Pay concept and following it, a 
more concrete expression of the same general thought 
as applied to industrial activity, comes our universal 
economic fallacy, the Want Theory. 3 

This is repeatedly defined and opposed in later chap- 
ters, and here need only be stated as that basic propo- 
sition in Political Economy in which it is assumed that 
man works to gratify wants, and that if his wants are 
otherwise gratified he will not work. This fundamental 
theory of economics rests, as will be readily seen, on the 
foregoing, on the Ego concept and the Pay concept. 
Part of it, more generally applied, is our general Self- 
interest theory, usually expressed in solemn tones: 
** Self-preservation is the first law of Nature.’”? Men 
say this as if it were so, and other people believe it 
simply because it is said to them so solemnly. Our 
brains, trained for all time to bow to authority, have 
a treacherous trick of believing whatever is advanced 
by those in authority or even by the scribes. The 
present scribe asks no such gulp, but that the reader 
use his own active thinking power on the propositions 
here advanced. Now, this self-preservation theory is 
contradicted on its own doorstep by the fact of the 
race-preservation instinct, the individual counting for 
nothing, absolutely nothing, in the unbroken stream of 
racial life of which he forms so small a part. 


66 HUMAN WORK 


If we were solemnly taught ‘ Race-preservation is the 
first law of Nature,’ we should be nearer the truth. 
Even in the purely individual animals the good of the 
race is paramount to that of the member, and in the 
collective animals the social instinct is so highly devel- 
oped that self-preservation is not even thought of. 
Break an ant-heap, and watch “the first law of 
Nature ”! Immediate, instinctive, unquestioning, they 
rush to save the eggs and young, to guard the queen, 
to preserve the group—not the individual. 

“Nature” develops whatever faculties are required 
in a given form of life, and if the life-form is collective 
the collective instincts appear in force. Now “ Self- 
interest ” as a motive does act upon the human being, 
but it does not compare in weight and value with the 
larger later motives of social interest. We assume that 
the visibly social processes we see going on about us 
are best governed by self-interest in the parties con- 
cerned; that efficient service is best commanded under 
this pressure. We are wrong. 

Social processes were initiated primarily along lines 
of self-interest, in orderly development, from existing 
instincts to higher ones, but the further developed are 
these processes the less useful is the early motive, the 
more needed is the later motive of social interest. Self- 
interest, preserved too long in social growth, becomes 
a deterrent force. The more wide and complex the 
process, the greater the distance between producer and 
consumer, the more injurious is the action of that essen- 
tially limited force. This is why in small, early societies 


CHAPTER FOUR 67 


there is more honest and efficient service under this 
motive; and in large, modern societies, unless the social 
instincts of duty, honour, and the like are operative, 
we find such infinitely ramified dishonesty and in- 
efficiency. 

Another stumbling-block of progress is an extremely 
ancient belief of ours, not derived from the preceding 
five, but in flat contradiction to some of them, which the 
popular and poetic saying calls “ the sweet uses of 
adversity.” We very generally believe that pain and 
difficulty are good for us, and the logical consequence 
of this belief—so far as practical life allows such an 
absurdity to have any consequence—is of course that 
we do nothing to remove pain and difficulty. The 
further logical consequence, that we should deliberately 
add pain and difficulty to our lives in order to improve 
them, is seldom allowed; it is too ridiculous even for 
our brains. 

Now what is the fraction of truth in this peculiar 
piece of idiocy? At its very base lies the law of 
physics: ** action and reaction are equal.” As hard as 
you push against a wall does the wall push against 
you. Following this comes the early observation of 
the effect of environment. Where the channel is nar- 
rowest the stream is deepest; where it is widest the 
stream is shallowest; and if you dam the stream the 
water rises to the height of the dam. » 

So in the action of the human forces we observe that, 
if you hinder and obstruct a man, he resists your pres- 
sure and rises against it—sometimes! Sometimes he 


68 HUMAN WORK 


does no such thing, but is crushed instead. However, 
we perceived numbers of cases where opposition called | 
forth resisting energy where action and reaction were 
equal, and we made our easy generalisation as to the 
beneficent effects of difficulties. 

Applied to human life, in the concrete environment 
which we call good and bad according to our lights, we 
observed further that this law seemed to work back- 
ward; that where a person had no difficulties, where all 
was made easy for him, he did not manifest energy. 
Then we felt sure we were right. We produced a lot 
of popular expressions of this general thought, a re- 
ligious phase of it being “ whom the Lord loveth he 
chasteneth ”; its application in education leading us to 
believe that it is good to make the child labour and 
struggle in learning—bad to “ make it too easy for 
him”; and in economics we apply it in our sad com- 
ments on the disadvantages of wealth, our cheerful 
assertion that “it is good for a man to be born poor.” 

Of course no one ever thinks of staying poor because 
of its benefits; no one foregoes being rich, or trying 
to be rich because convinced of its evils; above all, we 
do not seek to work out this theory on our children. 
Its main mischief is in preventing us from trying to 
remove the obstacles to human progress in general. So 
long as we even partially believe that obstacles promote 
to progress, that the hurdles add to the speed of the 
racer—why, if we do not really give extra hurdles to 
aid the man we want to win, we at least do nothing to 
clear the track. 


CHAPTER FOUR 69 


Now where does the essential error lie in this loosely 
_hung together bunch of foolishness? In the first place 


“pain” from difficulty. Pain is merely a 


separate 
message; it is a telegram to headquarters to say that 
something is wrong. It always means that. Normal 
action does not hurt. It may be “ good,” as the sen- 
tinel is good who gives the alarm so that you may save 
yourself ; but his alarm is a warning of evil. It may 


accompany a ‘ 


‘ good” process, like that of resuscitat- 
ing the drowning; but that is not a normal process, the 
pain is conditioned upon water in the lungs. 

If a person is so situated that he must bear pain, 
then it is good to get used to it, if possible. On this 
basis the early savage used self-torture to help him 
bear the incidental miseries of life, and from that prac- 
tice dated our views on the subject. 

The most unblushing survival of this gross savagery 
is seen in our practice of hazing, calmly defended by its 


perpetrators as ° 99 <6 


it makes boys manly,” “it develops 
character.” The savage had at least the grace to do 
it to himself, and it was not practised upon children. 
Our imperfectly educated children maintain in this the 
customs of the lowest savages, in a rudimentary form. 
There are times in life when pain has to be borne 
for a greater good, but that does not make the pain 
good. 

As to the other and a little more legitimate branch— 
difficulty. Here we feel more assurance. We do see 
the poor boy making tremendous struggles, and rising 


above his difficulties hardened, bruised, belated, but tri- 


70 HUMAN WORK 


umphant. We do see the rich boy making no struggle 
at all, and rising above nothing. Hence—but wait a 
bit. Do all poor boys thus struggle and rise? 

Do the slums produce the best citizens? Is a well- 
bred, well-fed, well-educated boy so hopelessly handi- 
capped in life by those advantages? Is our ceaseless 
attempt to provide for our children the best advantages 
all folly? We may not be logical, but have horse sense 
enough to know better than that. 

We know that poverty coarsens, weakens, stunts, 
degrades; that under its evil influence ‘‘ the dregs of 
society *” are steadily and inevitably produced. We 
know that where one person of phenomenal capacity 
can rise im spite of it, thousands of ordinary capacity 
are ruined because of it. | 

Abraham Lincoln was a rail-splitter. Yes. Were 
there no others? ‘There were and are many poor boys 
splitting rails, and yet the crop of Abraham Lincolns 
remains limited to one. 

Our error is a very simple one. We confuse a co- 
incidence with a cause. Most people are poor. There- 
fore most great people have risen from poverty. How 
many more great people we might have had under 
better conditions we shall never know. 

As for the effect of wealth, great wealth in private 
hands is not an advantage; it, too, is a morbid condi- 
tion, and under its evil influence the scum of society 
is steadily and increasingly produced. It is perhaps 
as hard for a great nature to overcome the difficulties 
of our illegitimate wealth as those of our illegitimate 


CHAPTER FOUR 71 


poverty. Still some do it. We have but to study the 
biographical dictionary to find that the proportion of 
great men to rich and poor is about the same as the 
proportion of those two classes, that is all. 

Meanwhile the healthy truth under this is the physio- 
logical law that exercise develops function. Whatever 
power you have is increased by exercise to a certain 
extent. But you must first have your power. A 
punching bag helps develop your muscles if rightly 
used, but it does not make them. Your daily food is 
the prime factor. 

To get the best results from people they must first 
be born in good condition—starved mothers and ex- 
hausted fathers are not advantageous; then kept in 
good condition ;—good air, good food, good clothing. 
Does anyone wish to claim that poor air or poor food 
or poor clothing is advantageous? When you have 
good stock, and give it all the advantages of true edu- 
cation, bringing out and correlating all its powers, then 
the strong and active creature can maintain and de- 
velop those powers by exercise. But dumbbells in place 
of dinner do not strengthen. 

One more very common attitude of mind with regard 
to work, not as fundamental as the foregoing, and 
not founded on any law whatever, but on arbitrary and 
evil conditions, is our general contempt for it. 

Regarding it, as we must under the Want theory, 
as done only to gratify a want; regarding it, as we 
must under the Ego concept, as done by the individual 
for the individual, it does seem a poor thing enough. 


G2 HUMAN WORK 


Why should we honour and approve the never-so-in- 
genious efforts of a person to keep himself alive, so 
scornfully described in a poem of Robert Buchanan: 


“Struggle, speculate, dig, and bleed, 
Reap the whirlwind of Venus’ seed, 


O senseless, impotent human breed!” 


But beyond the legitimate scorn of a social creature 
for what he estimates as an individual activity, comes 
our illegitimate scorn based on lamentable, evil con- 
ditions. 

The work of the free mother in the matriarchal period 
was never despised ; when men enslaved women their work 
became contemptible. So when the despised captive 
was made to labour, his work also was held contempt- 
ible. And then, as Veblen shows so irrefutably, this 
primitive attitude was retained through all the cen- 
turies in the stagnant pool of leisure-class life, that 
singular medium wherein the active modern world may 
find preserved a sedimentary deposit of most ancient 
times. ‘This class and its customs and habits of mind, 
being revered by us, we have made permanent and con- 
stantly reinforced the scorn of work which else would 
have been contradicted long since by every fact of 
progressing civilisation. | 

With this mixed foundation the feeling remains in 
full force. It serves to check the normal activities of 
those who “do not have to work,” and to belittle the 
importance of those who do. It shows, for one result, 
this pretty paradox: a human creature absolutely help- 


CHAPTER FOUR 73 


less, doing nothing whatever to maintain himself or 
anyone else, depending for the meanest service as for 
the greatest, on the assistance of others; and then 
calling himself ‘ independent,” and believing that he 
“‘ supports ” those who keep him alive, by “ furnishing 
them employment ”! And—still more paradoxical— 
the active and valuable persons who so laboriously main- 
tain this ornament believe it, too. 

A minor fallacy in our popular economics, but one 
doing much mischief, is that familiar phrase “ the law 
of demand and supply.” It is in part a logical deriv- 
ative of the want theory; in part based on a true 
natural law, and for the rest weakened and confounded 
by the conditions of our own artificial ‘* market.” 

Spencer refers to this with great solemnity in “* The 
Man vs. The State ”; showing how smoothly and beauti- 
fully great London is provided for by the working of 
this “law.” He points out the immense numbers of 
people to be supplied daily, and the immense amount 
of materials brought in daily, by ship, by rail, by 
horse and cart, under the wise guidance of individual 
self-interest and this governing “law of demand and 
supply.” It sounds very attractive! and when stated 
by so great a thinker it seems as if it were so. But is 
it? Are the millions of inhabitants in London thus ac- 
curately provided for? Do none starve and freeze? 
Do none dwindle and sicken, and become hopeless crip- 
ples and invalids for lack of proper supplies? Or 
again, do none waste and spoil, receiving far more than 


they need? Are the demands of the human body, of the 


74 HUMAN WORK 


human mind, of the human heart, really supplied in 
London, or anywhere else, by this alleged law? 

What do the words really mean, if they mean any- 
thing? For “ demand” read “ purchasing power ” 
“the law of supply and purchasing power.” What 
does * supply ” mean? It means the product of human 
industry. The product of human industry is equal to 
the purchasing power. This does not sound so smooth, 
but is more accurate. And what does it mean now? 
That those who have purchasing power can get what 
they want. Can they—always? 

Why, yes—f there is any. But if all the cuecuatees 
power in the world should happen to demand a few more 
of the works of Phidias—they would not be forthcom- 
ing. There is frequent complaint even among the 
very rich of their inability to get some things they 
want; such as ideal servants. This is a very common de- 
mand, and the air is filled with protest because, at any 
price, the supply does not equal the demand. This 
law is a common vagrant—* having no visible means of 
support.” All it amounts to is that if you demand a 
thing—and can pay for it—and there is any such 
thing—the previous owner will sell it to you—if he 
wants to. 

On the other hand, nothing is more frequent than 
our upsetting this supposed equilibrium by what we call 
‘“‘ overproduction.” If the supply were equal to the 
demand the demand is certainly not alleged to be equal 
to the supply. “It’s a poor rule that doesn’t work 
both ways.” 


CHAPTER FOUR 75 

What does govern the supply, if demand does not? 

66 Supply 39 
social energies. If it can be called * equal” to any- 
thing, it is equal to the combined action of heredity and 


is human production—the output of our 


environment, modified by our volition. The product of 
a race depends on its stock, its inherited characteris- 
tics; on its education, physical and mental, on its nu- 
trition and stimulus, on its governing concepts. 

To make such and such a product forthcoming you 
must have such and such a producer; he must have the 
capacity and the wish to produce such a “ supply.” If 
he has not the capacity, no power on earth—he it a re- 
ward of the princess and half the kingdom, or a pen- 
alty of thumbscrews and boiling oil—can get it out of 
him. 

Turn your “supply ” round and apply it to the 
producer. Supply him with all the necessary conditions 
for rich production. ‘Then we might say in a general 
way ‘“‘ the supply is equal to the supply.” But “ de- 
mand” is not a producing agent. It does not make 
people create, invent, or discover. It does not make 
them sell unless they want to—see Ahab demanding 
Naboth’s vineyard—or Frederic and his Miller of Sans 
Souci. It does not make them work even, unless they 
are able and willing. Demand what you please of the 
tramp and pauper—he cannot produce it. 

A natural law is a series of observed phenomena. 
Such things always happen, so we say it is a law. The 
observed phenomena in this case are those of a past 
stage of economic development; and at no time 


76 HUMAN WORK 


“natural” but purely arbitrary. A parallel may be 
drawn from similar observed phenomena in the system 
of slave labour. The “ supply ” then was the work of 
the slave. ‘The “demand” was a command, and was 
enforced by the whip; no whip no work, more whip 
more work, and behold “ a law ” ! The work equals the 
whip! So it did, in most cases—granting the man was 
a slave. But it was no law of social economics; it was 
a law of slavery. Neither is this theory of ours that 
*¢ The work equals the pay ” a law of social economics— 
it is only a law of wagery. 

Among free men, the whip would not produce work 
but merely a fight. Among independent gentlemen an 
offer of pay does not produce service of any sort—it 
is regarded as an insult. The crucial condition of the 
work-and-whip law is that you shall hold the whip and 
have power to use it; in the work-and-pay law, that 
you shall hold the pay and have a right to withhold it. 

These are the root errors most especially discussed in 
this book : 

1. The Ego Concept. 

2. The Pleasure-in-Impression Theory. 

. The Pay Concept. 

. The Want Theory. 

. The Self-Interest Theory. 

The Pain Concept. 

- The Law of Supply and Demand; 

with the derivative scorn for work; here only enu- 
merated and briefly set forth for convenience in 
reference. 


ED ow 0 


V¥V: THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (I) 
Summary 


Idea of social organism, not new. Proposition stated. 
Proof advanced on three main lines. First, nutritive 
processes of collective and organic society. Men do 
not support themselves. World-wide production and 
distribution of food. Individual could not become 
baker or tailor, they are social functionaries. Organic - 
evolution along line of modification to food supply. 
Man the only creature who has mastered his food sup- 
ply, he makes that which makes him, he produces food. 
Production of food a collective function, never found 


_ in individual animals. Physical conditions of agricul- 


ture essential to social progress, agricultural unit a 
village. Second, specialised activities of society col- 
lective and organic. Social evolution of trades, arts, 
businesses. Increasing interdependence. Instance of 
teacher. Evolution of social functions. Third, the 
brain a collective organ, a social organ, thought a 
social function. Effect of isolation on human brain, 
partial or complete. Difficulty of retaining mental 
stimulus. Individual animal’s brain im relation to his . 
own activities. Human brain in relation to common 
activities. 


V 
THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (1) 


THE concept that society is an organic form of life is 
not new to the world. 

The popular mind, confronted with many conspic- 
uous proofs of human solidarity, admitted the idea to 
one of those thought-tight compartments in which we 
keep such concepts as we are unable or unwilling to 
think through and hold in logical relation to our others. 
There it has remained, enlarging somewhat in course of 
time and loud events, and tending to modify such con- 
duct as came its way to the social benefit. But since 
a much larger brain era was governed by the egoistic 
concept, and vital affairs far more directed by it, we 
still consciously act as individualists, and still construe 
Human life in terms of the individual. Let us now use 
the temporary power of the brain to think in defiance 
of its own previously held ideas; and study the organic 
nature of Society. 

The proposition is that Society is the whole and we 
are the parts: that that degree of organic development 
known as human life is never found in isolated indi- 
viduals, and that it progresses to higher development in 
proportion to the evolution of the social relation; 
that a man is, individually, a complete animal, with 
sufficient ability to attain the necessities of an animal 

79 


80 HUMAN WORK 


existence; but that as a human being he is but a 
minute fraction of a great entity, the necessities of 
whose existence are only to be attained by the com- 
plex interdependent activities of many men. 

That this relation is strictly organic, involving the 
high specialisation of the individual man to the social 
service in activities which are of no possible benefit to 
his separate animal life—(as the activities of a dentist 
or a teacher); but which are of visible benefit to his 
community, his community in turn supporting him. 

That these common and composite activities have de- 
veloped a life-form quite above and beyond that of its 
constituent men; with a structure and functions outside 
of and including theirs. That whereas the life-proc- 
esses of the constituent individuals must of course be 
insured and improved by the higher life inclosing them; | 
yet that a greater or less sacrifice of individual interests 
may at any time be necessary—and is naturally made— 
the greater including the less. | 

That this Social Organisation tends to make safe 
and happy its constituent organisms in their separate 
animal lives, yet their greatest happiness lies in their 
recognition and fulfilment of the social life. 

That an increasing social consciousness and social 
activity is the most healthful and happy growth for 
the human race; and further, that “the riddle of 
human life ”’ is made quite simple by this purely natural 
and evolutionary position. 

In proof and illustration let us consider certain facts, 
most of them commonly known to us all, but not com- 


CHAPTER FIVE 81 


monly considered in this connection. We will observe in 

turn the organic nature of Society as shown in its nu- 
tritive processes, in its high and personally sacrificial 
specialisations, and in its patently collective mental 
life. 

First, and most visible, come the physical life-proc- 
esses; those daily activities in which our energies find 
expression, by the products of which our lives are 
maintained. Among facts suitable for nursery educa- 
tion is the glaring one that in plainest economic rela- 
tion * no man liveth to himself nor dieth to himself.” 

Each man does not support himself by his own ef- 
forts, as an individual animal does, but pools his 
efforts with those of others and shares in the common 
good as a collective animal does; as the bee or ant. 
This does not refer to any consciously advocated plan 
of collectivism; but to the present fact that our cof- 
fee comes from one country and our tea from another; 
that the Californian gives us oranges and the Kansan 
beef; that the carpenter and mason build our houses 
and the tailor makes our coats. 

The daily necessities of one man are met by the ac- 
tivities of countless other men. If they were gone, the 
one man could not supply himself with any of these 
things; but would, if he lived, sink to the level of the 
savage hunter,—who is indeed “ self-supporting.” We 
have, it is true, a system of exchange in which it is 
endeavoured to make each man’s share in the common 
product proportionate to his personal efforts; but even 
if this system worked successfully it would not alter the 


82 HUMAN WORK 


fact that the supplies are really made by the others— 
and the one—alone—could not make them. 

Lay aside for the moment the confusion of idea 
naturally arising from our system of interpersonal ex- 
change and its convenient medium, money. 

Suppose that money were entirely out of the world; 
or that we were so flooded with it that it lost its value 
as a medium of exchange. Great confusion as to how 
much of anything should be demanded for something 
else would of course ensue; but the most conspicuous 
result would be the unavoidable perception that it was 
the thing we needed to live on—not the money. 

The purchasing power of money varies continually, 
but the nourishing power of wheat or the heat-retain- 
ing power of wool does not vary. We eat the bread 
and are kept warm by the coat; and the wheat and wool 
are prepared for us by many strangers. It may be for 
a moment supposed that an individual man could, if he 
chose, make his own bread and coat from his own wheat 
and wool, but follow back the evolution of these proc- 
esses and see if he ever did. 

The more nearly alone you find a man—as the Bush- 
men—the more nearly naked he is, the more absolutely 
a hunter and an eater of raw food. To raise wheat and 
bake bread requires a stationary group of long stand- 
ing. It is a social process. So with the coat—the man — 
who lives really alone wears at most the skin of another 
animal. 

To keep sheep, to shear, and card, and spin, and 
weave, and cut, and sew—all these processes require a 


CHAPTER FIVE’ 83 


stationary group of still longer standing; they are 
social processes. A man alone can catch another 
animal, can * eat his fat and wear his hair”; but the 
baker and the tailor are slowly evolved social function- 
aries. Everywhere we see the present proof that the 
wants of man are not supplied by his own efforts and 
cannot be; that his life processes are essentially col- 
lective. 

Now let us approach these facts from behind, watch 
their inception and growth, and see how unavoidable is 
the conclusion. | 

The life of any creature is primarily dependent on 
the regular renewal of its constituent particles. The 
process of living uses up the materials lived in. Living 
involves dying, and to postpone the dying the struc- 
ture is continually supplied with fresh materials. This 
continuous supply of fresh materials we call nutrition. 
It is an increasingly elaborate process, with “ many a 
ship ’twixt the cup and the lip ”; and the main line of 
organic evolution is in development of these nutritive 
processes. 

Conditions of the environment modify a creature, as 
in hide and hair; conditions of inter-animal competition 
modify him, as in horns and stings ; conditions of repro- 
duction modify him, developing an elaborate physical 
mechanism and a more elaborate scheme of decoration; 
but the most distinctive modification of a creature is 
that produced by its nutritive conditions. ‘ Order 
Mammalia,” with all its towering superiority, is 


founded merely on a new way of feeding the baby. The 


84 ‘HUMAN WORK 


food supply of the world is subject to fluctuating in- 
fluences—climatic, geographic, and other; and as we 
watch the widening panorama of animal forms chang- 
ing and growing up the ages, we see the whole proces- 
sion to be moving always in one line—in pursuit of its 
dinner. We think of our dinners as a pleasing series of 
events, but we do not appreciate their awful importance. 

The life of any creature absolutely depends on get- 
ting together a certain group of chemical constituents 
and keeping them reinforced. While those constituents, 
massed in certain proportions, are cunningly poured 
through a certain small orifice called a mouth, the crea- 
ture lives. A procession of dinners passing a given 
point—that is the physical condition of life. We are 
the given point. If the procession goes another way— 
or stops awhile—“ we ” cease to live. 

And since there is no law of nature calling on the 
proper constituents to arise, to detach themselves from 
their undesirable comrades, to form into rightly pro- 
portioned groups, appear at proper intervals and to 
enter the “ given point,’”—therefore the principal ma- 
chinery of every living form is developed to discover, 
pursue, seize, and gather in these constituents. To ob- 
tain what we want from the air, gills and lungs are in- 
vented; that supply is so instantly imperative and so 
plentiful and easy of access, that an unconscious or- 
ganic motion sucks it in. If food were as simple and 
common as oxygen we should be spared much exertion. 

But food is anything but this. In its crude forms it 
is thinly scattered in the water, and small early beast- 


CHAPTER FIVE 85 


lets float around and grab it as they can. ‘“ You get 
food when it drops and you die when at stops—you help- 
less free agent of sorrow! ” 

Food in vegetable forms is also widespread and thin. 
The creatures that live on grass have had to develop 
the most cumbrous and involved of alimentary canals; 
huge barrels filled with many stomachs, supported by 
sturdy legs, as of tables, to hold the eating machine up, 
and carry it eternally about after its plentiful but 
highly diluted dinner. A concentrated vegetable food, 
like the fruit, brings out quite other qualities; as seen 
in all light swift arboreal animals, as the monkey; and 
between ground and tree rises the long neck of the 
giraffe—stretching, ever stretching, after his ascending 
dinner. | 

The humming-bird has slowly acquired a very special 
tongue to get his dinner, so has the butterfly ; the tooth 
of the squirrel is necessitated by the stubborn nut; and 
the poor thirsting camel has his private portable food- 
and-water supply to meet the demands of life between 
far-scattered oases. 

But when it appeared that food in predigested ready- 
to-eat packages was specially desirable; when the car- 
nivorous habit was developed, then indeed we find a wild 
variety of adaptation to one’s dinner. Food in this 
form was not only widely scattered and difficult of 
access, but actively reluctant, sometimes even conten- 
tious. But means were found to encompass it. Was it 
small and hidden like the ant, yet numerous enough to 
pay for eating? Lo! the ant-eater’s slender snout and 


86 HUMAN WORK 


slenderer tongue pursue and capture it. Is it a fat 
grub, deep boring in the bark? The ingenious Javan 
monkey develops a special finger for his extradition. 
Does the insect fly waveringly from flower to flower? 
The bird flies more accurately and swiftly from insect 
to insect, and the hawk swoops still more efficiently 
from bird to bird. 

Whatever form the dinner took, wherever the dinner 
went, there followed the fluent, ever-changing animal or- 
ganism, producing tooth or claw, tongue or proboscis, 
seven stomachs or a private fish-pole—whatever was 
necessary to lure, catch, hold, inclose, and assimilate, 
this ever-receding and sometimes actively resisting, but 
always indispensable dinner. The evolution of animal 
organisms is conditioned mainly upon the food supply. 

How does humanity figure in this transformation 
scene? 

Man alone, of the whole animal kingdom, has at- 
tained a complete new stage in this imperative process 
of nutrition. Where the most primitive ameboid cell 
can but receive food; where the whole machinery of 
later organisms can but seize food; man, and man alone, 
produces food. Through all the ages, through every 
conceivable modification of structure and function, the 
animal has pursued its dinner. Man has caught it. 

Man alone has permanently mastered his food sup- 
ply; instead of an endless chase it is a closed circle—he 
makes that which makes him. That is why physical 
evolution stops with man—and psychical evolution be- 
gins. No longer at the mercy of thin grass, man makes 


CHAPTER FIVE 87 


the fat-grained corn; no longer endlessly chasing the 
buffalo, he raises the big steer. His prairie in the 
garden, his prey in the barnyard, the animal can rest at 
last, and man can grow. By what strange new power is 
this immense step taken, which has enabled this one out 
- of all created forms to apply productive force, instead 
of mere destructive force, to his food supply? By the 
power of organisation. By entering upon that new 
life, the social life, which raises us above all lower: 
forms. 

The cell groups with others into the organ, the or- 
gans group again and form organisms; the organisms, 
once more combined, form an organisation. Society is 
the fourth power of the cell. 

A low and limited form of social life began with the 
temporary union of hunters; loose fluctuating hordes, 
like those of wild dogs or wolves. 

When cattle were kept instead of killed, were milked 
and sheared and bred with care and forecast, there 
arose a higher group-form, the family. With an in- 
sured food supply at hand man sat quiet, watching his 
cattle; and with food to spare and time to spare, he 
began to grow. The family, our physical nucleus, 
grew too; grew as it had never grown before. 

The limits of cattle-fed life were sharp and clear. 
There was no permanent home, no village, no extra- 
familiar intercourse, only warfare over pasture and 
water between tribe and tribe. But the hour came 
when corn was planted and eaten; and then our human 
life was indeed established, 


88 HUMAN WORK 


The conditions of permanent physical juxtaposition, 
so essential to social growth, were met for the first | 
time. The Hunter, requiring forty square miles of land 
per capita to chase at hazard his laborious prey, had no 
chance for social growth. Any other man on his forty 
miles was a competitor and reduced the supply of food, 
so he killed him if possible; and this habit also did not 
conduce to social growth. Families, too, were small 
when each man “ did his own work ” as these did. When 
came the Shepherd and his plenteous food, came larger 
families; but there was still a need of some five square 
miles per capita to feed the beasts; as the family grew 
the miles increased; and on the “ free land ” with its 
“equal opportunities ” the families met at the edges 
and warred with one another as competitors. This, 
again, was not conducive to social growth. 

But the Farmer, with far more food on far less land, 
food more richly and rapidly reproductive, and taking 
far less time to mature; with the family growing faster 
than ever, but taking up less room for its food supply ; 
the Farmer is the base of the true social structure. Sur- — 
plus nutrition and surplus time meant accumulated 
energy and frequent opportunity which, with the per- 
manent home, allowed the birth and nurture of the indus- 
tries and arts. The physical nearness of the people— 
acres instead of miles for their nutritive base—allowed 
of larger growth of language; and so in and with and 
following these conditions the social life became pos- 
sible. 

Note the absolute collectivity of this productive food 


CHAPTER FIVE 89 


process. The lowest food-producing unit is a village; 
not a separate man, or even a family. Agriculture is 
not found below a certain human group form. Social 
life is born with agriculture. The distinctive food proc- 
esses of humanity are collective. 

A second field of proof of our organic relation, and 
one as patent as the first, is the complex specialisation of 
humanity. 

If you find a lump of protoplasm you cannot tell 
whether it is a whole or a part; if you divide it, its parts 
make wholes and prosper as before. Very low life-forms 
may be cut into fragments, and each develops whatever 
it lacks and makes a new whole. There is little differen- 
tiation here. But if you find an eye, a tooth, a claw, 
you are at no loss as to whether it is a whole or a part. 

If it were a whole, it would be able to maintain and 
reproduce itself. Being a part, it can do neither. The 
eye is a remote, highly developed special organ, of no 
use to itself; able only to serve the complex organism 
of which it is a part; and nourished and maintained 
only by that organism. This condition is absolute 
proof of organic life as distinguished from individual. 

Apply this proof to society. Society consists of 
numbers of interrelated and highly specialised functions, 
the functionaries being individual human animals. So- 
ciety develops them—they could never have been evolved 
in solitude. As easily conceive of independent eyes, 
rolling around and doing business by themselves, as of 
independent teachers, carpenters, dentists. Society 
maintains them, as the body does the eye; intricate 


90 HUMAN WORK 


labours of many others feeding, warming, housing, pro- 
tecting the teacher, while he teaches. 

Alone he might hunt, and “ support himself” as a 
separate animal; as if, conceivably, the eye could re- 
turn to a protoplasmic condition and soak up a living 
somehow ; but as an eye it would cease to exist; and he 
would cease to exist as a teacher. The teacher, teach- 
ing, cannot support himself. His time, his strength, 
his enormously specialised skill, are spent in teaching, 
and the society which made him and which needs him, 
necessarily supports him. ‘Teaching as an activity is 
not predicable of individuals. It is a power to transmit 
the social gain in intelligence and knowledge among 
the social constituents. No solitary individual could 
have attained this knowledge and experience; and, if he 
had it, he could not teach it to himself. Teaching is a 
social function; a very elaborate and long-developed 
social function. ‘The teacher is an extreme instance of 
the social functionary. Other than as a social func- 
tionary he does not exist. 

This test may be applied far and wide, in every trade, 
art, science, or business; no human occupation escapes 
it. Whatever a man can do separately for himself, an 
ape can imitate. Whatever a man does which is worth 
calling human is done collectively and for others, it 
is a social function. He may work alone at his business, 
but the tools he works with are the fruit of slow social 
evolution, and the work he does is done for others. He 
may retire to the forest and think alone, but he thinks 
on the problems of human life; no personal affairs can 


CHAPTER FIVE sj! 


occupy the energies of a human brain; and the brain 
he thinks with is a slow social product too. 

The evolution of the interdependence of social func- 
tion is as clear as that of the interdependent physical 
functions of our separate bodies. As early animal 
forms have few and simple functions, gradually 
evolving those more delicate and complicated, so do 
early societies have few and simple arts or trades, 
and similarly evolve them. As society progresses 
the trades flow wider, dividing and subdividing as 
they go, until we have the exquisitely sublimated 
special skill of the modern worker; and at each 
step of the process the organic relation tightens as 
well as widens; the specialist is less able to “ take 
care of himself,’’ and the others are less able to do with- 
out the specialist. 

‘“¢ Every man to his trade ” voices our popular recog- 
nition of this law, and ** Jack-of-all-trades and master 


4 


of none” shows the true merit of the “ all-around- 


man.” 

We now come to a third, and in itself a fully suffi- 
cient proof of the organic nature of society—not of 
the social organism as a useful figure, an illustration, 
an analogy, but as a literal biological fact. Here are 
a number of separate animal bodies. Each is a group 
of interactive organs, each does business for itself with 
no need of combination with another, save in the tem- 
porary union of sex with sex, and of mother with child. 
These creatures are individuals. Here again is a 


number of apparently separate animal bodies. But 


92 HUMAN WORK 


each has in his head an organ which cannot perform its 
functions alone; an organ which for its healthful use 
requires contact and exchange with similar organs 
lodged in other bodies. | 

This organ is the brain. That degree of brain de- 
velopment which we call “ human” is only found in 
creatures socially related; it is not individual brain 
power, but social. The human brain, for health and 
usefulness, for its normal life, requires a number of 
human beings with whom to feel, think, and act. We 
can, it is true, physically isolate a human animal, and 
maintain his animal life; but his human life—. ¢., social 
life; his “ feelings” and “ thoughts,” the whole field 
of brain activity—is injured. 

The human brain is the social organ; it is our medium 
of contact and exchange. Set a man in absolute solli- 
tude and his brain is affected at once. Cut off from 
the contact which enables it to freely receive and dis- 
charge its supply of social energy, its action becomes 
increasingly morbid. In proportion to the complete- 
ness and duration of the isolation the brain is injured, 
and ultimately ruined. 

We know the effect of solitary imprisonment, or of 
being cast away alone on some remote island. Short 
of this we know the progressive effect of degrees 
of isolation. The lighthouse keeper knows—they put 
two men in lighthouses most removed from social 
touch; and even that is a dangerously “ short circuit ” 
for the social organ to act in. The solitary shepherd 
knows, on the wide waste plains of Australia or Texas. 


CHAPTER FIVE 93 


The hermit or recluse of any age, the separate dwellers 
in old houses in the country, any human creature who 
lives alone, is injuriously affected in brain action. 

This is not saying that mere privacy is harmful— 
that is a necessity for the social brain; such tempo- 
rary solitude as shall enable it to work out its special 
contribution to our common thought, and to rest from 
the forceful social currents. But however solitary the 
student or author, the product of his labour is for 
others, and must reach them; his brain must connect with 
the others, though at long range. 

In this is another side of the proof of our mental 
collectivity. The poet feels for humanity, the student 
studies for humanity; the discoverer, inventor, all work 
for humanity. (This does not refer to the pay they 
expect, and their attitude toward it, but to the work 
itself.) All through our history we see the great- 
brained men who thought for the world, moved by a 
quenchless impulse to transmit this thought to the 
others, to pour out into the common stock the product 
of their brains. This they did because they must— 
even when loss and injury, ostracism or martyrdom 
followed. It is the compelling functional necessity of 
the brain to discharge into other brains, as well as to 
seek from them its vast and varied stimulus. 

In more immediate and commonplace instances we see 
the same law. The difficulty of “ keeping a secret,” 
z. €., of voluntarily retaining stimulus; the necessity of 
* relieving one’s mind ”—a perfectly fit phrase, as much 
so as its familiar physiological analogue; the value of 


94 HUMAN WORK 


the confessional; and, commonest of all, the vivid in- 
terest of each human brain in the affairs of the others; 
all these show the collective nature of that organ. 

The most ordinary woman, gossiping with her neigh- 
bours, manifests this social necessity for contact and 
exchange, however low. ‘*‘ Mind your own business!” 
we cry, and cry in vain. No brain advanced enough to 
be called human can possibly find full use and exercise 
in contemplation of one person’s business. It must con- 
cern itself in the business of the others, their common 
business. 

The human brain is a social organ. Human thought 
is a social function. 

Approach this fact along lines of evolution. The 
brain, like all other organs, is called for by conditions 
and developed by exercise. Simple conditions, simple 
exertions—low brain. Enlarge and elaborate the con- 
ditions—increase the exercises—and the brain develops. 
Observe here, within human history, how we have de- 
veloped the brain of the dog by such change of condi- 
tion and action. 

In every form of animal life you find an exact re- 
lation between the range of activities of the creature 
and his degree of brain development. This is neces- 
sarily so, as the increase of activities is what produced 
that degree of development. The simple activities of 
the clam need no brain, and have none. The complex 
activities of the fox need a complex brain, and have it. 
Everywhere this exact proportion is found until you 

reach the human animal. 


CHAPTER FIVE 95 


There is no relation whatever between the individual 
human being’s bram and his dividual activities. But 
there is the same inexorable law of development by 
which alone to account for this highest of all brains, 
and the same relation is plainly to be seen between the 
social brain and its social activities. No conceivable 
activities of one biped, through however many genera- 
tions, could have developed the brain of the architect, 
for instance. He has the power to think a church. He 
cannot build a church—never could—never could have 
even wanted one! 

The growth of many men, for many ages, brought 
their common needs, their power of common action, and 
their brain power to co-ordinate it. You need no power 
of co-ordination to run one individual animal; the need 
for social activities developed the social brain. The 
single human animal could have only needed a single 
shelter; could have so only built a single shelter, and so 
have only thought a single shelter. The power of one 
man to think for many men to do, is a distinctly human 
power, and evolvable only by the common doing. 

In our collective relation we have developed a capac- 
ity to think, focussed perforce in some individual brain, 
for the working point of Society is the individual; to 
think, to the advantage of thousands of people for 
thousands of years.. This organic capacity cannot be 
accounted for on an individual basis. | 

The laws of natural evolution work to develop in 
each organism the powers which it most needs; steadily 
raising the efficient type. The human animal mani- 


96 HUMAN WORK 


fests powers of no earthly use to himself, relatable in 
no way to his personal needs, inexplicable on any indi- 
vidual hypothesis, but plainly useful to Society, relat- 
able to the Social needs, perfectly explicable by the 
Social hypothesis. 


Veet NATURE OF SOCIETY (If) 
Summary 


Social organism a natural life-form. Confusion from 
arbitrary and superficial distinctions. Social functions 
not physically hereditary. Village type. Earth-limits. 
Social life m Individual. Natural law under “ imperial- 
ism.” Mistakes of social functionaries. Why society 
was developed. Tendency to revert. Wider conscious- 
ness and actwity of Society. Social Soul. Race- 
memory. Joy a social quality. Size of social feelings 
and actions. Early decoration. Fund of power. 
Social consciousness in young persons. Happiness of 
right social relation. Social nourishment, rest, exer- 
cise. What are limits of social organism. No material 
really solid. Human connections. Detachment of 
human individual only temporary. Apparent para- 
doxes. Ea-man. Smaller human relations. Family, 
Church, Army, City, Nation. Appearance of world- 
consciousness. Order of importance of function. 
Change in relative value. Ethics the physics of social 
relation. Egoism right for individual. No basis for 
ethics in individualism. Collectwism of Christian- 
ity. Social life immortal. 


Vien 
THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (II) 


Tue Social Organism is as natural a life-form as fish, 
flesh, or fowl. It has been naturally evolved, its proc- 
esses and appearances are as natural as those of any 
other part of creation. We do not recognise it because 
of the interference of that ancestral brain; and we are 
further confused in looking at it by our arbitrary clas- 
sification, resting on old and false ideas. 

As physical geography is confused to a child’s mind 
by the demarcations and contrasted colours of the map 
of political geography; so is the natural organic rela- 
tion of Society confused in our minds by our superficial 
and artificial ‘‘ social distinctions.” We have estab- 
lished social distinctions and relations on lines of phys- 
ical connection, such as birth; whereas physical rela- 
tionship has no similitude with social relationship; or 
of political connection, as nation or party; whereas, 
again, there is no resemblance; or on even more fantas- 
tic lines of sex, of caste, of creed, or of the amount of 
money possessed. 

These arbitrary distinctions are no more social and 
legitimately organic than Indiana is yellow and Ohio 
blue. Legitimate social relationship is functional. It 
is that relation in which we serve each other. Its classi- 
fication is on lines of industrial evolution, together with 

99 


100 HUMAN WORK 


the gradual development of those later functions of 
government, education, art, and science which follow 
the industrial. In the evolution of government the king 
was a normal functionary; his kingship being his 
power to act as general chairman of his assemblage of 
people, and, in very early days, as leader in battle. To 
make kingship hereditary was an arbitrary classifica- 
tion ; social functions not developing in lines of physical 


“a line of kings ” 


heredity. You can no more make 
than a line of poets or surgeons. If you do it, arbi- 
trarily, you injure society by inferior service. That 
was the conspicuous result in the king line. | 

In pre-social times there was merely the protoplas- 
mic mass of undifferentiated human stock. Arising 
from this we have first the sporadic growth of: villages, 
resting on their common food activities, and then the 
appearance of larger groups, and more and more di- 
verse functions, elaborating in mutual dependence. 

The natural limits of an organic social relation are 
the limits of its essential functions. ‘These were once 
quite narrow—each little community being self-sup- 
porting. To-day we are rapidly approaching a social 
organism limited only by the earth. Our interdepend- 
ent functions are now international; and natural de- 
velopment on those lines is only prevented by our false 
classification on unnatural lines, with the resultant en- 
deavour to maintain the self-supporting independence 
of the smaller unit. 

The more highly organised a society, the more range 
and force have its component individuals. America is 


CHAPTER SIX 101 
in the American. Athens was in the Athenian. Where 
else? A member of some tiny social unit on a remote 
island does not carry the same amount of social effi- 
ciency as a member of a larger unit. This is the under- 
lying natural law which makes for general human 
unity, but which finds its misguided and injurious 
expression in our doctrine of ‘* imperialism.” 

The normal line of enlargement is simply an exten- 
sion of functional exchange, a sharing of the highly 
specialised activities and advantages of the larger so- 
ciety by the smaller. Every step of this really benefi- 
cent process has been accompanied throughout history 
with the utmost injury to all parties, by conquest and 
carnage, by insane pride and cruelty; because we did 
not understand the process in which we were the actors, 
but governed our conduct from ideals of egoism, lo- 
calism, and rapacity. This is especially plain in our 
time, because of the enormous growth of industrial 
functions, and their inevitable spread around the world. 

The process is natural and in itself means increasing 
benefit to all society; but, being grossly misunderstood 
by the highly specialised individuals who carry out 
these processes, the beneficent results are mingled with 
terrible evils. The social functionary who is evolved to 
distribute some food, oil, or other necessity to a larger 
radius of consumers than ever before, takes advantage 
of his position to sequestrate a larger share for himself 
than was ever before possible. The “ master minds ” 
who are able to manage these giant industries are so- 
cial products, called for and produced to meet the larger 


102 HUMAN WORK 

social needs of our times, but they are still governed 
by economic theories suitable to a South Sea Islander, 
and so we have that ‘“‘ malfeasance in office,” in social 
office, which so shamefully blackens the face of nations 
to-day. | 

It is a fair inquiry to demand of the organic theory 
of Society a reason for its development. Why should 
independent individuals have been led into a combina- 
tion which inevitably involves some personal loss and 
injury, and has been made to involve such an enormous 
amount? 

How are we to account for this higher life-form, in 
the iron economy of nature? Many have seen the vis- 
ible benefit to individuals which comes of the Social re- 
lation. The fact that we help one another is plain 
enough; but even that sum of benefit does not seem suf- 
ficient to justify the social sacrifice; the loss of indi- 
vidual liberty, the life-long labour at one thing; the 
growing distance between social man and the free, 
simple, contented individual animal. 

“T think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so 
placid and self-contained. 

“IT stand and look at them long and long. 

“They do not sweat and whine about their condition. 

“They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. 

“They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. 

“Not one is dissatisfied; not one is demented with the mania 
for owning things. 

“ Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived a thou- 
sand years ago. 

“Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.” 

—WHITMAN. 


CHAPTER SIX 103 


This reversionary tendency is strong in us all, the 
easy backsliding to the physical freedom and _ inde- 
pendence of the hunter and fisher. The immediate 
stimulus, the immediate action, the supply of one’s own 
needs by one’s own efforts,—this is a delight to almost 
all of us; and some are constantly straggling and drop- 
ping behind the procession, to revert to the wood life of 
primitive man and his pre-primitive forbears, to “ turn 
and live with the animals.” Current literature is full of 
this social reversion to-day, this “ call of the wild,” this 
tempting invitation to give it all up and go back to the 
beginning. 

It is so much harder to pour your life’s energies a 
life long into the Social pool, and perhaps get very little 
out—and then not what you want. What deep inevi- 
table gain has been at work for which relentless nature 
has slowly driven us up the path of Social Evolution— 
' a steeper, bloodier, more agonising road than any 
other creature has had to tread? 

The gain is this (and observe that it is precisely of 
the same nature as that which has driven the contented 
annelid up to all the excitement, difficulties, and perils of 
the higher mammalian) : the Social Organism manifests 
a wider range of consciousness and activity than any 
other life-form. 'The human animal, alone, is but a 
beast; and has but the narrow egoistic range of con- 
sciousness and activity. As part of Society the human 
animal becomes the organ of a consciousness and an 
activity so vast that in its limitless expansion we have 
been able to conceive of Life, Death, and Immortality, 


104 HUMAN WORK 


of Time and Eternity, of Humanity, of Liberty, Jus- 
tice, and Love. What we call the human soul is de- 
veloped in the social relation. It is Human indeed, i. e., 
Social. It is Ours. 

In the organic division of labour of a physical body, 
the life processes are so developed that more exertion 
can be made and more sensation received, than in the 
same amount of living matter in lower forms. A hand, 
taken separately, would have a certain contractile 
power; but as connected with the arm it has far more, 
as connected with the general nervous system more yet. 

In that transmission of energy which seems to be the 
business of the universe an increasing complexity of 
mechanism is evidently called for because it has been 
produced and maintained. Society is the most complex 
mechanism of all. It can receive, store, and discharge 
more energy than could its constituents in equal number, 
but unorganised. 

The social consciousness is the widest and most sen- 
sitive receiver and transmitter so far produced. ‘*‘ We 
look before and after, and pine for what is not.” This 
is a social quality. As man grouped and grew together 
came that development of race memory which gives to 
family, to nation, to Humanity itself, its dignity and 
power. It is “Our” past, “ Our” present, “ Our” 
future. The life of Humanity is one, and it is that life 
which we as individuals feel; which makes us able to 
suffer more, enjoy more, and do more than any other 
kind of living thing. 

In failing to recognise the real nature of society 


CHAPTER SIX 105 


and put ourselves in right relation to it, we have largely 
checked the flow of social energy and perverted the 
social instincts and social processes; therefore, to our 
morbid egos, social relation often seems to bring us 
more pain than pleasure. We admit that we cannot 
live out of it—the sufferings of the hermit are greater 
than those of the misplaced social constituent; but we 
live in it blindly, in cramped and distorted positions, 
rendering our social service under the crushing pres- 
sure of the egoistic concept, and getting but a faint 
and occasional sense of the potent joy of true social 
relation. 

The transcendent happiness possible to Humanity, 
to all humanity, by virtue of its humanness, is a thing 
of which we practically know nothing. Consider the 
range of sensation in an individual animal. This is 
most strictly limited to his physical activities and such 
psychic impressions and expressions as pertain to his 
narrow field of being. The female animal has the joy 
of the maternal function, that great first step beyond 
the Ego consciousness; a pleasure and a pride partly 
physical and partly psychic, but limited forever to the 
individual young. The male animal sometimes shares 
a fraction of this parental feeling. In certain creatures 
which live in groups or herds there seems to be a very 
vivid common consciousness on some lines, as shown 
by the instantaneous nervous transmission in a stam- 
pede; and in the highly socialised bee and ant there 
appears as highly developed a collective sensorium. 
But, though collective, it is on a low plane; the im- 


106 HUMAN WORK 


pressions it receives and the expressions resultant all 
pertain to the physical wants of the individual con- 
stituents, however elaborately these wants are met. 

With us, in our social relation, there is an enlarge- 
ment of the sensorium past any measurement we can 
yet make. The size of our sensations increases as more 
and more individuals are tuned to respond to the same 
stimulus. ‘There is room in what we call “‘ the human 
heart ” for a passionate exaltation of feeling that finds 
no parallel below us. This immense influx of stimulus 
prompts us, yes, forces us, to a commensurate expres- 
sion; and if this expression be true, it puts in concrete 
form the intense feeling and then continually transmits 
it to as many people as are sensitive to that form of 
expression. , 

Take an illustration on a very early and simple plane. 
A happy, primeval squaw, not hungry, not cold, not 
afraid, and feeling in her already growing social con- 
sciousness both the pleasant memory of these conditions 
and the pleasant assurance of more, has more stimulus 
coming in than her body can sit quiet under. No 
human being can ever be as stationarily contented as a 
ruminating cow, his income of sensation is too great. 
That small, perfect circle of life of the individual 
beast,—hunger, effort, gratification, rest,—is changed 
to an endless upreaching spiral in our social relation. 

It is not only that our hunger is greater because one 
can hunger for all; because no human being can be 
really satisfied till all are satisfied; but that our stim- 
ulus is greater, and calls for endless discharge. So 


CHAPTER SIX 107 


our happy squaw is moved to transmit her press of 
feeling; she must discharge it in action; and she does 
so in some decoration of her jar or basket. This 
decoration is an embodied joy, and, being fixed in 
visible form, it then transmits that joy to as many as 
behold it. It is a little fountain of social energy. 

A society, from its inception, multiplies the range 
and depth of sensation, and commensurately, the work- 
ing expression of its members. From age to age, as 
this great common fund increases, is the power to feel 
and the power to do increased. More and more people 
thrill to a common impression ; the rising wave of force 
prompts to ever greater expression, reaching more and 
more people. 

Thus, in a normal society, the individual life in- 
creases in sensation, in power, and in joy in an ascend- 
ing line that as yet suggests no limit. In pain and 
degradation also, the pessimist will protest. Of course, 
as an accompanying possibilty. But’not as an essen- 
tial condition. Such as exists is merely owing to our 
wholly unnecessary and mistaken action. The pain is 
a transient and needless thing; the immense joy is in 
the real nature of society. 

The young human creature, as he begins to grow 
from the individual animal period into social life, feels 
this intense current of force, the vast and varied desires, 
the vaster energies ; but he does not know what it is, nor 
do his teachers. Ego-bound systems have cradled and 
nurtured him, an egoistic family, an egoistic economy, 
an egoistic religion cut off every avenue of growth; 


108 HUMAN WORK 


and the stimulus of the whole world throbs and beats in 


vain, forced finally into some dog-trot routine, wherein 


he thinks to “ earn his own living,” to ‘ 


4 


‘support his 
own family,” to “save his own soul.” 

The tremendous thirst for happiness which the young 
human being feels is perfectly natural. Young indi- 
vidual animals show no signs of such disproportionate 
desires. ‘The tremendous ambitions of young people 
are equally natural. Human life is in them the mul- 
tiplied and accumulated life of all humanity for all 
time, and all it needs for the same peace and poise 
which is the portion of ‘‘ the lower animals” is free 
expression. 

The nature of Society is no mystery. Our relation 
to it is no mystery. It is simple, orderly, healthy, and 
in its largest manifestations either peacefully uncon- 
scious or sublimely happy. Every person who has by 
blessed chance found his right place in social service, 
who has the range of contact with his kind which he 
needs, and the range of activity which he needs, may 
be as calmly happy as any browsing cow, as ecstat- 
ically happy as any soaring lark. 

What does any creature need for right growth?— 
nourishment, rest, exercise. Society needs these too. 
We, in social relation as social beings, need the social 
nourishment, rest, and exercise. Social nourishment 
comes through contact with the world’s supplies, perma- 
nent and current. We need to “stock up” in our 
common heritage of information, of beauty and use 
and power. Whatever we need which lower animals — 


CHAPTER SIX 109 


do not need is social nourishment. The desire to know 
of the healthy young mind, the desire to travel, the 
desire to see people, these are forms of our undying 
hunger for that which belongs to us as human beings. 
When all of us, from our youth up, are put in easy 
connection with the unlimited supplies of Society, we 
shall all be socially nourished. Observe that these 
things are not consumed while they nourish, but remain 
continually refreshing as many as can partake of them. 
Every member of Society should have free access to 
all social products: art, music, literature, facilities of 
travel, and education ; and would so absorb his preferred 
nourishment as unerringly as do the cells of the body 
from the whirling profusion offered by the blood. 
Social rest is another imperative need of human 
beings, in proportion to their humanness. The more 
highly specialised and intense the service of the indi- 
vidual the more he needs to break off the connection and 
rest; rest from being social; go back and be animal 
awhile; find in pure ease and relaxation, in irrelative 
physical exercise, and in the beautiful family relation 
(one of the safest and loveliest life-forms sheltered by 
society ), that complete rest which will enable him to 
return to his social relation with renewed vigour. 
Vacations of all sorts—the country home, the hunt- 
ing trip—tell of this need, and the nervous collapse of 
highly socialised types when denied it is a common 
occurrence. Simple and primitive trades, if not ex- 
cessive in hours of labour, are far less exhausting. 
Breathing goes on continuously, digesting with regular 


110 HUMAN WORK 


frequency, but thinking has to rest. A healthy social 
life will allow for the natural periods of rest for all 
its members. 

Social exercise is but the use of our best and highest 
faculties to the largest end. A Gladstone confined to 
directing envelopes would not be exercising his social 
faculties to their full extent. Napoleon as a chauffeur 
might have killed quite a number of people, but would 
not have been really satisfied. Exercise is life’s first 
law, and full exercise is required for full development. 

This is where in our imperfect degree of socialisa- 
tion we suffer most, for lack of this full use of our 
social powers, especially women. We are frequently 
overworked as‘ individuals while underworked socially, 
another condition accounting for morbid, nervous 
states. A man with capacity for managing a high- 
grade department store would lack exercise to a most 
injurious degree if he were kept as a country grocer’s 
clerk, though he might ruin his eyes with bookkeeping 
and his back with lifting barrels. The full use of our 
largest faculties in the largest relation—that is social 
exercise. 

Another thing which prevents us from recognising 
_ the nature of Society is our almost unavoidable mental 
limitation to the perception of the stage of development 
represented by the animal organism. 

“If Society is an organism,” we say, “ where are 
its feet and hands, its eyes, nose, and mouth? Where 
is its skin? Where does it begin and leave off?” And 
not seeing any large beast stuffed with persons like 


CHAPTER SIX 111 


the Trojan horse, or some vast man-filled man like the 
wicker-built sacrificial cage of the Druids, we deny the 
~ existence of the alleged organism. 

Organic life is not limited to existing forms. As it 
has developed so far, it has been in the line of increas- 
ing freedom and fluency of relation. The constituent 
cells of vegetable matter are held together less rigidly 
than in the pre-organic mineral formation. In animal 
matter the relation is more fluent yet. And in social 
matter, so to speak, it is yet more free and movable. 
Yet, if you look down upon the earth as one with some 
vast microscope studying the life of mould, or monads, 
you will find that the human particles are connected 
inexorably. Remember that even in minerals—if you 
can see largely enough—the atoms whirl alone. They 
are held in relation by laws of attraction and repulsion, 
and that relation is close enough to form to our senses 
a solid body. 

Human beings are not webbed together like frogs’ 
eggs, but they are held together in definite relation 
by laws of attraction and repulsion, like the constitu- 
ents of any other material body. The stuff that 
Society is made of is thickest in great cities, and as it 
develops these dense and throbbing social ganglia 
grow and grow. In wide, rural areas the stuff is thin 
—very thin. But watch the lines of connection form 
and grow, ever thicker and faster as the Society pro- 
gresses. The trail, the path, the road, the railroad, 
the telegraph wire, the trolley car; from monthly 
journeys to remote post-offices to the daily rural de- 


112 HUMAN WORK 


livery; thus Society is held together. Save for the 
wilful hermit losing himself in the wilderness, every 
man has his lines of connection with the others; the 
psychic connection, such as “ family ties,” ‘¢ the bonds 
of affection,” and physical connection in the path from 
his doorstep to the Capital city. 

The social organism does not walk about on legs. 
It spreads and flows over the surface of the earth, its 
members walking in apparent freedom, yet bound in- 
dissolubly together and thrilling in response to social 
stimulus and impulse. 

Before Society grew at all we were but human ani- 
mals, maintaining and reproducing ourselves like any 
other animals, but with no connection, no common life. 
They were of no faintest use to one another, but quite 
the contrary, being legitimate competitors for a free 
supply, and so naturally hating and destroying one 
another. As Society grows the connection between its 
members grows and thickens and differentiates. Men 
are of increasing use to one another, no longer com- 
petitors in any legitimate sense, but combiners in com- 
mon production and distribution, and so naturally 
helping and loving one another. Those who still com- 
pete and destroy are but survivals from the earlier 
period, mischievous relics and back-numbers. All Social 
evolution is the story of the development and improve- 
ment of the connective tissues of Society, from lan- 
guage, the great psychic medium, to steel rail and wire, 
the infinitely multiplying physical medium. This con- 
nection and interaction of the human animals is the. 


CHAPTER SIX 113 


most conspicuous fact about them, and that connection 
is by every test organic. 

Another and similar reason for our denial of the social 
organism is the fact of the temporary detachableness 
of the individual human being. Men visibly walk about 
on their own feet, going apparently where they will, 
and no examination discloses a Siamese band between 
one man and his brother man. So when the sociolo- 
gist says there is no such thing as a separate human 
creature,—that a solitary human creature is a contra- 
diction in terms,—the average individualist replies, 
**See Robinson Crusoe!” This answer shows great 
lack of biological knowledge. The splendid growth of 
education in our day, which is beginning to teach our 
children dynamics as well as statics, laws as well as 
facts, will soon remove this ignorance. 

If I say, ‘‘ There is no such thing as a tree without 
roots,” it might be replied, “ But there is! See my 
Christmas tree?” Yes, it is there for a little, but it is 
not really a tree, it is timber; it cannot last, nor grow, 
nor reproduce its kind. 

I may say, “ There is no such thing as a man with- 
out a head,” and someone reply, “ But there is! See 
this gentleman on the dissecting table and his head on 
the tray yonder.” That is not a man, it is a corpse. 
I may say, “ There is no such thing as a finger without 
a hand,” and it be replied, “‘ See this one here in alco- 
hol!” That again is not a finger, it is but a corpse. 
If you join a severed finger quickly enough, it will grow 
on again. If you return a severed man to his society 


114 HUMAN WORK 


soon enough, he will grow on again. So in this per- 
fectly true statement, “There is no such thing as a 
solitary human creature; it is a contradiction in 
terms”; the presentation of a man on an island or in 
a prison cell is no answer. 

Though cut off like the finger, he does not instantly 
deliquesce and disappear. His connection with the 
society which evolved him being severed, he may con- 
tinue to live as an animal, but is in process of decay 
as a human being; he is an ex-man. Our connection 
is so subtle, so fluent, each human brain being so large 
a storage battery of social energy, that we can separate 
for a time with no loss. But make the separation com- 
plete and the humanness dies. 

We have been deterred also from seeing the larger 
and more vital human relation by the smaller and 
more arbitrary. Perhaps the most conspicuous of 
these is the Family, often called the Unit of the State. 

Now the family is not a distinctively human relation 
at all; many varieties of animals, especially among 
the higher carnivora, have families, with monogamic 
union, too, where devoted parents strive and suffer to 
provide for and protect their young. A _ perfectly 
normal and necessary group is the family, and one 
proved best for successful reproduction of the species, 
but not a social unit at all. The individual is the social 
unit, combining to develop the structure and functions 
of Society. 

Families never combine, they can’t. Families take 
no part in social relation. Each family has its own 


CHAPTER SIX 115 


structure and functions, its own interests, its own pur- 
poses, and these are frequently in direct opposition to 
the social good. Just as Society offers a surer, safer, 
higher life to the individual, and thus makes possible 
that inordinate egoism which is so serious a danger; so 
it gives the same opportunity to the family and allows 
of a wider, deeper, and more intense familism than is 
possible among sub-social animals. 

It is most interesting to watch the slow struggle of 
the true social relation to establish and extend itself 
against these natural obstacles, as in the successive 
overthrow of Patriarchism and Feudalism by the State. 
The City as a social group has much easier recognition 
with us than larger entities. Civic consciousness began 
early and found its splendid flower and fruit, as well 
as its iron limitations, in Greece. National conscious- 
ness is now quite well established, having the same ad- 
vantages and disadvantages as the Civic, only on larger 
scale. To-day we are beginning to feel the largest 
consciousness of all, the truly Human, in whose un- 
bounded growth and beautifully progressive develop- 
ment the petty limitations of all earlier forms are 
slowly disappearing. ‘“‘ What are your national dis- 
tinctions? ” an inquiring Englishman asked me. ‘ The 
time is past for national distinctions,” I replied. ‘* The 
time is coming for the people of the world, and Ameri- 
cans are the first of them.” | 

Then, too, we have been so occupied in the specific 
local function of Society as to miss that general 
grouping and balancing which made them all possible. 


116 HUMAN WORK 


Take that vast and varying social function the 
Church,—organised religion,—appearing very early in 
the dominance of savage priestcraft, finding its height 
in the resistless Hierarchies of Egypt and Palestine, 
and struggling ever since to hold its failing sway. 

Take the Army, another very early, very strong, and 
very hard-dying social form. It is still with us, brilliant 
and loud, an increasing evil in the fast-growing indus- 
trial life of to-day. See the Soldier scorning the 
Merchant in the Middle Ages. See the Merchant 
directing the Soldier to-day. His time of pre-eminence 
is past. 

So in course of social evolution one and another 
organic group has been developed, each tending to 
excess by the law of inertia (and social inertia is the 
most long-winded we know), yet all inevitably sinking 
into place in the smooth, complex interaction toward 
which we are moving. Men, specialised to the social 
service, in their several lines, yet knowing not what 
they served, have limited their enthusiasm to their spe- 
cialty, and striven to make the Church, the Army, the 
Law, Art, or what they call Business, their supreme 
end. 

The real social organism includes them all, and 
relates them all in order of importance. This order 
of importance may as well be laid down here, as quite 
essential to an understanding of the nature of Society. 
The standard of measurement used is that of evolu- 
tion, “ lower” or “ higher ” being marked in that line 
of progress which leads always from the less to the 


CHAPTER SIX 117 


greater, from the simple to the complex. Relative im- 
portance may perhaps be measured downwards: a 
stomach is more important than an eye, because you 
cannot live without it. But the eye is “ higher ” than 
the stomach, a later developed and more specialised 
organ. 

So in social evolution agriculture is more important 
than literature, because we cannot live without it; but 
literature is higher than agriculture as being later 
developed and more highly specialised. The social 
organism has followed in its evolution the same path 
as earlier life-forms, developing first the simpler and 
more immediately vital processes, and later those more 
delicate and finer organs which are needed to fulfil the 
uses of its progressive life. And as, in physical evolu- 
tion, we find now one and now another function of 
dominant importance to the creature, so in social 
evolution we can trace the varying value of social 
functions, the military and religious processes of early 
societies gradually giving way in importance to the 
industrial and educational processes of our own times. 

Most valuable of all, to our so long religiously 
moulded minds, is the effect of this recognition of the 
nature of society upon Ethics. Vague indeed, com- 
plicated, mystical, difficult to understand, have been our 
gropings after this great science. Ethics is the Science 
of Social Relation; it could never be understood by 
individualists. 

There is no ethics for an individual except to main- 
tain, improve, and reproduce himself. A consistent 


118 HUMAN WORK 


and remorseless egoism is right for the individual 
animal; through it he fulfils the law of his being; — 
through it he improves his race. So we, wishing to 
improve a breed of cattle, consistently and remorselessly 
select and train and breed from preferred individuals, 
neglecting or destroying the inferior ones. So do mis- 
taken men, not appreciating the nature of society, urge 
a similar stern stirpiculture upon us, and would have 
us neglect or destroy our defective members and breed . 
only from the best. 

But when we have a social animal to deal with, as 
the bee, different laws operate, or, rather, the same 
laws on a larger scale, a higher plane. It is the best 
swarm now to be selected; and the value of the swarm 
depends not so much upon the size and vigour of its 
individual constituents as on how they work together. 
There is ethics in a hive, laws of collective behaviour. 
There is ethics in Society, because it is a collective unit. 

Ethics, to Society, is what physics is to matter; 
ethics is the physics of social relation. Physical law 
holds material constituents together in those combina- 
tions and relations which make the material bodies 
we know... Ethical law holds social constituents together 
in those relations which make the social bodies we know. 

But we, not knowing the social body, could not 
know its laws. We have striven in vain to predicate 
ethics of individuals. You “ ought” to do so? Why 
“ought” I? Because it is “right.” What is 
“right ” ? Whatever God said. And what did God 


say? What these ancient gentlemen have written in 


CHAPTER SIX 119 


their ancient times. And if I do not believe what the 
ancient gentlemen wrote? There is no answer to this 
except the somewhat fatuous one of ‘so much the 
worse for you!” 

The writings of the ancient gentlemen were not sus- 
ceptible of proof. 

Then came Christ, talking sense. He grasped the 
nature of Society and preached its laws. Ye are all 
members of one body and of one another. You shall 
love your neighbour as yourself; that is, recognise him 
as really part of what you are part of—all one self ; 
and the love of self becomes mutual love as we see what 
Self is to a Human Creature—Our Self. Christ saw 
and said all this, and did it, which is more; lived,—as 
far as one individual could,—true to his social relation, 
faithfully fulfilling his function to that great living 
thing, though its immediately surrounding constituents 
very naturally killed him. 

That great Christian concept of mutual love and 
service is good ethics; it is scientific; its truth and value 
can be proved; it works. Had we grasped and applied 
it a good many painful centuries might have been 
saved us. 

But we, our minds still darkened by the beast-concept 
of Egoism, trying to personally own the human soul 
and save our piece to all eternity without caring what 
became of the rest of it; we, with our personal God 
and his personal Son, and our personal damnation or 
salvation to consider, have very generally ignored the 
theory and practice of Christ, and made of him merely 


120 HUMAN WORK 


an article of faith by which to maintain our precious 
Egos forever and ever. And this in the face of his 
*“* Whoso saveth his life shall lose it; but whoso loseth 
his life for my sake [man’s sake, the sake of the whole | 
shall find it!” 

When we realise the nature of society we shall come 
nearer to understanding the teachings of Christ than 
we have done in twenty centuries of sublimated self- 
seeking. In recognising it we rise at one step from 
the dark and narrow limits of the personal life, that 
poor animal existence, with its common animal wants 
and their fulfilment; with its animal loves and hates, 
hopes and fears, pains and pleasures; with its brief 
period of animal life, cut up into changeful patches 
of infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, and age, and 
take our true place in social life, which is immortal. 
Whether it dies off the earth in a million years or so 
we do not know yet; since it was born it has not died, 
but grown and grown continually. This wide, rich, 
glowing field of consciousness includes the animal life 
and maintains it in a higher and better condition than 
ever before, but its real distinctive range of feeling is 
far beyond that. 

All noble and beautiful emotions we call ‘*‘ Human ” 
are social and immortal. All the distinguishing 
abilities, the power and skill and ingenuity that we call 
‘* Human,” are social and immortal. ‘“ I” am born, 
grow up, and die. “I” am a transient piece of meat, 
enjoying food and sleep and mating, hunting and 
fighting. 


CHAPTER SIX 121 
But “ We” are more than that. We together con- 
stitute another “* I,” which is Human Life. That was 
born gradually, many long ages back, and is now 
slowly growing up. In that human life, that common, 
mutual, social life, are all things that make us human. 
When we enter consciously into that great life we are 
indeed immortal, ‘* saved,” indeed, from primeval lim- 
itations of the animal ego. 


VII: THE SOCIAL SOUL 
Swmmary 


Our “common sensorium” the “human heart.” All 
human feelings common. Action and reaction between 
body and spirit. Cat and Sheep. Mob spirit, civic 
spirit, etc. Effect of mstitutions. Effect of imdus- 
tries. Confusion from Ego Concept. Prominence of 
paimful processes. Widening social consciousness. 
Collective pleasure greatest. Team-work. Effect of 
position of women. Sea-combat in industry. Altru- 
ism and Omniism. “Self” an extensible term. Or- 
ganic relation. Progressive injury of egoism. Effect 
of special industries on altruism. Sailor, farmer, 
miner. Household labour. Men more altruistic than 
women. Religion has not understood altruism, which is 
a natural social mstinct. Man with tail. Nature of 
“charity,” transfusion of blood. Selfishness and 
socialness. My soul, our soul. Social needs. Ineffi- 
ciency of personal gratification. Longitudinal eaxten- 
sion of the soul’s life not satisfactory. Must widen 
our life, our soul. The Social Passion. Names do not 
affect facts. Social life evolves social love. Social 
imstinct im duty, in work. Social ascetics. Human 
nature Social nature. 


. . ‘ a ait | 
\ ay i} SVT fh say ha i 
; ai ARE ny tan 5 pats 
, ‘ PR ASU a ce SONA pera aN: a 
ih vir AL Ah PANE i ; eT RA A AA he. 4 ER REN 
¢ j y mtu ys A ) Lis ait iy : bi s 
MN a GRUBER A AES GG A " y Fores 
fey i Foy : a Ea ke M ate } minh 
ih of 
, 
i ¥ 
the 
Vi | 
‘ ae 
{ 
Fi : ‘ 
j halen aa it 
lee e 7 \ : fe a5 Ale 


VII 
THE SOCIAL SOUL 


Some deny the organic concept of society on the ground 
that we human beings have no ‘ 
But we have. The most conspicuous and distinctive 
fact in our psychology is precisely that common sen- 
sorium. We call it in ordinary speech “ the human 
heart,” or “the human spirit,” or “ soul,” and quite 
correctly. It is human, and “ human ” is “ social ”; it 


‘common sensorium.” 


is the social soul. 

The individual feels it, inasmuch as the brain, our 
medium of sensation, is lodged in an individual head; 
but what he feels is a common feeling, not a personal 
one. He has of course his purely individual range of 
sensations, emotions, promptings to action; but these 
are felt also by any other animal, they are not 
** human.” 

All our distinctive human feelings are in common, 
are transmissible, belong to us collectively, not individ- 
ually. So markedly true is this that we have labelled 
our most visibly collective feelings “humane.” Com- 
mon feeling is human feeling, and that great sum of 
higher consciousness we call the soul is the human 
soul. 

Psychological terms are all vague and slippery to 
handle; but we can clearly observe in any living thing 

125 


126 HUMAN WORK 


these two departments—the spirit and the body. While 
they are together the thing lives, works, goes; when 
divided the body gradually disintegrates. 

We observe, too, that once a specific allotment of 
spirit makes to itself such and such a form, that the 
form continually reacts upon the spirit and modifies it. 
Each animal as we know it has a spirit exactly suited 
to his body, evidently the result of long lodgment in it. 
The sheep has a spirit suited to his body, the cat has 
a spirit suited to his body. Each can do what he wants 
to and wants to do what he can. 

If we can imagine the two transformed and trans- 
spirited,—the spirit of a cat in the body of a sheep 
and the spirit of a sheep in the body of a cat,—it is 
plain to see how grievous would be the condition of 
that beast. It would want to do what it could not, 
and could not do what it wanted to. Spirit must fit 
body, or body fit spirit, or the two disband and that 
creature is dead. 

This relation holds in the life of Society; but as 
that life is large, complex, enduring, and comprises 
within it not only the lives of its constituent individuals, 
but the lives of its constituent institutions, the facts are 
not so easy to follow. Taken historically it may be 
observed thus: from the small, early social forms of 
the tribe and its villages up to the nation and its cities 
we see this relation of body and spirit. ‘ A body of 
men” of any kind that lives, 7. ¢., works, must have 
a common spirit or it cannot so live and work. 

The loosest mob must have some transient but com- 


CHAPTER SEVEN 127 


pelling spirit to hold it together, else no mob. The 
smallest village has its common spirit; and the largest 
city—the largest nation—must have its common spirit, 
to live, to grow, to work. We are familiar with some 
terms of these facts; we know, appreciate, and con- 
demn the absence of ‘the civic spirit.” We admire 
and reward ‘ public spirit.” We have to deal with 
the facts of Society’s organic life, even while those 
graveyard brains of ours are still crowded with the 
monuments of dead concepts. 

In popular literature and oratory we freely handle 


“animated by a common spirit,” ‘* the 


such terms as 
national spirit,’ the “spirit of our institutions,” 
“Vesprit de corps’’; but we have not set our minds 
to work to grasp and relate these terms in their full 
meaning. We are familiar also with the reactive 
modification of social forms on the social spirit; seeing 
men of all characters enter some definite institution and 
come out all more or less altered to one distinctive char- 
acter, the academic, the military, or whatever; and to 
us the largest, newest, most gratifying proof of this 
is the effect of our American institutions on the people 
of all nations. In organising this nation we embodied 
the best spirit of the time in a certain form of gov- 
ernment and invited all men to come and enter the new 
national body. They did, and a more marked and 
rapid modification of spirit by form history has never 
shown. Come from wheresoever they may, their chil- 
dren enter our educational, their parents our industrial 
and political institutions; and they forthwith become 


128 HUMAN WORK 


Americans, manifesting our virtues—and our faults— 
with startling rapidity. The effect is strongest on the 
young and composite races, and weakest on the older 
established stocks, as the Chinese and Hebrew, but it 
is perceptible in all. 

In smaller instance we all know the effect of a given 
school or college on those entering it,—either teacher 
or learner, but especially the learner, as more young 
and impressible,—as shown in ‘‘ the Harvard spirit,” 
or that of Oxford, or of Yale. When fighting was 
the dominant activity we had the natural growth of 
fighting bodies, elaborately organised, and of a com- 
mon fighting spirit which completely overmasters the 
individual spirit of its constituents. If specific re- 
ligious practices are pursued we have the appearance 
of a religious body and its accompanying spirit. 

Once more, a small and literal instance: if a charitable 
body is founded,—an “ institution” in that limited 
and unlovely sense,—in the “ inmates,” both officials and 
beneficiaries, speedily appears the spirit of that body, 
and a very disagreeable one it is. Wherever inter- 
dependent functions are established appears organic 
life; a common body to perform these functions, a 
common spirit to co-relate them. 

The social spirit is a common consciousness developed 
by common activities, and appearing in us in propor- 
tion to the extent and interrelation of those activities. 
To share in it demands of the individual, male or 
female, a share in the collective activities which con- 
stitute human life. 


CHAPTER SEVEN , 129 


Activities performed by one’s self alone, for one’s self 
alone, or one’s immediate physical relatives, are not 
distinctively human, and do not develop the human 
spirit. 

An agricultural population manifests certain traits 
in common the world over. Distinctions of blood and 
of religion are in abeyance before the unifying force of 
a common industry as a modifier of character. Fisher- 
men, or sailors, or miners, or traders invariably show 
marked traits in common, however otherwise differen- 
tiated. 

If all men followed one industry we should have one 
principal character; but fortunately our social proc- 
esses are increasingly varied. There does arise, how- 
ever, a steadily widening field of common character as 
the traits demanded by all industries alike increase 
among us. All industries require peace and self-con- 
trol; a regard for law and for organisation; and these 
tendencies steadily improve the social spirit as we leave 
savagery farther and farther behind. 

Commerce requires honesty and accuracy, and stead- 
ily develops them, though commerce is more open to 
certain retroactive influences than the directly product- 
ive processes. Productive industry, being the eco- 
nomic necessity which brings us together, is the source 
of our social spirit, and that spirit is constantly mod- 
ified by changes in the forms of industry. 

Our social consciousness is of slow and partial de- 
velopment, as is easily explicable. The highly devel- 
oped personal consciousness which the most primitive 


130 HUMAN WORK 


savage brought with him into social relation, and which 
occupies the same field of sensation as the wider social 
consciousness, has operated to prevent easy recognition 
of the latter. The social pleasures and the social pains 
we took to be personal and sought or avoided them 
as such. Even the most sublimated and morbidly 
acute social consciousness, as shown in a passionate 
philanthropy, is still diagnosed by some as a form of 
self-gratification, so persistent is the dominance of the 
egoistic concept. 

Another reason is that as our external activities, re- 
quiring’ conscious cerebration, are more perceptible 
than our internal ones, so we were far more easily im- 
pressed by the external activities of Society than by its 
deep-seated organic processes; these external ones were 
more telic, partook more of the nature of personal 
actions, and were readily thought to be such. 

A third and very strong force operating against our 
recognition of social consciousness is that it so gen- 
erally hurts. So long as our organic social processes 
went on normally they were unconscious. Individual 
man, well fed, well guarded, reproducing the race in 
peace and comfort, sported in the sea of social well- 
being and failed to observe that there was such a thing. 
But let any industry become inflamed, or paralysed, 
or arrested, and the pain is felt far and wide. .No one 
likes to be hurt. The more socially we felt our pain 
the more it hurt, of course, being bigger. To be 
hungry one’s self is one thing—to feel a famine is an- 
other. People with the most social consciousness suf- 


CHAPTER SEVEN 131 
fered most, so long as social processes were not healthy ; 
and, therefore, our effort has been to resist the in- 
crease of social consciousness. 

We say “ mind your own business ”—** don’t concern 
yourself about other people,” ‘let the other man 
walk.” We try not to feel the famine in India, the flood 
in China, the ignorance in Russia, the cruelty in Ar- 
menia, the crimes and casualties, the deformities and 
diseases of our own great cities. But in spite of our 
natural reluctance to a widening of the sensorium that 
thrills most to pain, it is widening in spite of us. 

More and more every year we are feeling common 
evils, and seeking to remove them. It is not that “I” 
am seeking to relieve “‘ my ” distress and improve “* my ” 
conditions, but that “ we,” in institute and associa- 
tion, club, congress, and convention, are rousing more 
and more to a consciousness of ‘‘ our” distress, and 
seeking methods by which “ we” may improve “ our ” 
conditions. This marks the growth of social conscious- 
ness. A pleasant thought here is that as fast as social 
conditions improve so fast does social consciousness be- 
come an avenue of pleasure instead of pain, and so we 
shall encourage instead of oppose it; thus the improve- 
ment will widen more and more rapidly. 

Something we see already of the larger joy obtain- 
able in social conscioysness, in our pleasure in one an- 
other’s work. I do not mean in personal consumption 
of it, so to speak, but in our satisfaction in the achieve- 
ments of “ our ” business men, “ our ” “ scientific men,” 
* our ” inventors, mechanics, artists, discoverers, teach- 


132 HUMAN WORK 
ers, and the like. ‘“‘ We” take pleasure and pride in 
what “ we ” do—requiring social consciousness. 

Children’s games show the natural development of 
this feeling in the human being. <A child likes to play 
alone if he has to; but children like far better to play 
together—the excitement and joy of co-ordinate ac- 
tivity being far greater than in individual activity. 
This delight in collective expression increases from age 
to age. As measured merely by popular sports and 
amusements, the game involving a contest of team with 
team is more enjoyed than the older sport of individual 
race and contest, both by spectator and player. 

There remains one more strong cause for our slow- 
born recognition of social consciousness, and that is the 
position of women. ‘Their activities being confined to 
an excessive development of sex functions, and industry 
on the low stage of solitary disconnected performance, or : 
at most the first step of group-labour, personal service ; 
and this industry, too, confined to self or family in- 
terest altogether ; it is not to be expected that any high 
degree of social spirit could be attained by this in- 
choate mass of individuals in society, but not of it, tak- 
ing no part in its processes economic or politic, and no 
share in its growing responsibilities ; nor is it to be ex- 
pected that men, though increasingly socialised by 
themselves, could avoid the influenge of this unsocialised 
half of humanity, both through its daily companionship 
and the tremendous effect of maternity. 

We are still further affected by the result of the po- 
sition of women in maintaining an abnormal degree 


CHAPTER SEVEN 133 


of sex-tendency, and we have seen how anti-social an 
influence is the natural belligerence and destructiveness 
of masculine energy in excess; therefore, it is no wonder 
at all that our social development has been slow, erratic, 
and liable to extremely morbid forms and _ processes. 
Nothing will conduce so much to the right growth of 
society in body and spirit as the progress of women 
from their position of prehistoric sex-bound egoism 
and familism, to their rightful share and place in the 
vital processes of Society. They, as half the component 
individuals of Society, will then contribute their share of 
modern social feeling and action; they, becoming more 
human and less disproportionately sexual, will reduce 
the influence of morbid sex-tendency in both male and 
female; and they, as mothers, will rapidly fill the world 
with full-blood human beings, instead of the present 
half-bloods,—half socialised through the father, but 
held in prehistoric individualism through the mother. 

The social spirit is as “ natural” as the individual 
spirit. It is conspicuously visible in action among us, 
but we have hidden it under false names. 

** Altruism” is one of these. This in its very as- 
sumption of ‘ others” preserves the ego intact, and 
that ego has never yet been convinced of any rational 
cause for surrendering to those other egos. We have 
only been able to urge it under our equally mistaken 
Pay concept, trying to show that we should meet re- 
ward either from the other egos, or from God. And as 
our nobler instincts have always revolted from the Pay 
concept, the progress of Altruism has been retarded. 


134 HUMAN WORK 


We need merely to understand it to withdraw all 
this opposition. What we call altruism should be called 
—has been called*—“ omniism ”’; it is a feeling for all 
of us, and includes the ego. It is, if you please, an ex- 
tension of self-consciousness, a recognition that my self 
is society, and my “ego” only a minute fraction of 
the real me. 

This omniism is as normal a growth as egoism. The 
preservation of the individual by individual action re- 
quired egoism, and developed it. The preservation of 
society, by collective action, requires omniism and de- 
velops it. That it is not more generally developed is 
due to the resistance and confusion of our brains. 

The superiority of omniism to egoism is in its being 
a later and more complex development, an organic su- 
periority. As the single cell is lower than the organism, 
so cell-consciousness, if there be such, is lower than self- 
consciousness, and as the single organism is lower than 
the social organism so self-consciousness is lower than 
social consciousness. EEgoism is common to all beasts, 
is perfectly natural, useful, right; but omniism is a 
human distinction, progressively developed as we be- 
come socialised. 

My “self” is my conscious area of working ma- 
chinery, wherewith I receive impressions and produce 
expressions, and if I were a tenfold Siamese twin—if 
I felt, and thought, and worked with the bodies of 
twenty men—those twenty men would be my “self,” 


*By Mr. J. G. Phelps Stokes. Article in Wilshire’s Magazine, 
March, 1903. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 135 


and to care for them would be as “ selfish ” as it is for a 
solitary animal to care for itself, and as perfectly 
right. Not to care for them, to be only actively con- 
scious of my twentieth part “ self,” would be a condi- 
tion of arrested development, pitiable rather than 
blameworthy. In a social condition of existence, the 
life and prosperity of each member is absolutely inter- 
woven with that of the others, of the whole, and not to 
recognise this, and act accordingly, is to manifest an 
inferior plane of development. 

Organic relation of any sort is mutual, involving 
mutual obligation, duty, and, if necessary, sacrifice. 
When a physical body is starving to death, it is impres- 
sive to note the gradual surrender of its constituent 
parts in the order of their importance. First, he calls 
in all his savings,—the fat. Then the muscles slowly 
feed in their store. Lastly the “ vital organs.” And 
all this is unconscious, managed by the long-established 
mechanism inside, without any dictation from the cere- 
bral consciousness the man calls “ self.” 

Our internal social functions, the immediately neces- 
sary economic processes, may proceed unconsciously to 
quite a degree of development under the direction of 
egoism, because, as the social life is the main protection 
of the individual, so the interests of the individual and 
of society are in many ways identical, and the individual 
may serve society very fully and never dream that he is 
doing anything more than to “ take care of himself.” 
But Society cannot proceed far in development before 
the interests of the whole may involve a temporary sub- 


136 HUMAN WORK 


version of the interests of the past, and here a bene- 
ficial social conduct requires social consciousness. 

Our carefully preserved ego concept acts mischie- 
vously in proportion to the progress of society. The 
more complex the social process, the larger the social 
interests involved, the more injurious is this primitive 
spirit of egoism. ‘The selfishness of a peasant is far less 
harmful than the selfishness of a railroad-owner. In 
the orderly development of social economics this would © 
have been taken care of by the natural extension of feel- 
ing accompanying the extension of action, but that has 
been checked, as usual, by our mental heirlooms. Never- 
theless we can observe this natural relation of action 
and feeling in spite of our opposition. 

The growth of altruism in certain special industries is 
most instructive to study, as showing precisely what 
conditions most regularly and rapidly develop it. 
Look, for instance, at the distinctive characteristics 
educed by the industries of agriculture and navigation. 

Sailors, as a class, are generous, quick in heroism, 
licentious, intemperate, and profane. 

Farmers, as a class, are by no means generous—fre- 
quently stingy; you never heard of a sailor who was a 
miser, but often of farmers who are such. The farmer 
is not quick to heroism, but, on the contrary, is slow 
to recognise his class-needs, hard to organise, prone to 
the most primitive individualism. On the other hand 
the farmer is comparatively chaste, and temperate, and 
guarded in speech. 

Why these obvious distinctions, in men of the same 


CHAPTER SEVEN 137 


race, class, and time, often of the same families? As 
obviously from the difference in their industries. 

The farmer is engaged in our most remote and an- 
cient industry, the one nearest the bottom, in fact it is 
the bottom of real social growth; only the cattle-keeper 
stands between the farmer and the savage. The farmer 
is more nearly self-supporting than any other member 
of society. He is still in the short-circuit activities of 
the self-feeder; while his surplus product does in truth 
feed the world and give us all a chance to grow, he 
sees nothing of the world he feeds, and, blinded by our 
customs of exchange, thinks that in selling corn he is 
but feeding his family. Therefore the farmer is 
naturally egoistic—inevitably so unless he recognises 
the social nature of his function. 

But as the farmer marries early and easily; woman, 
too, on that plane of economic activity being a valued 
co-agent in living, like the squaw; so the farmer is 
under no strong temptation to unchastity. His life of 
out-of-door muscular exertion is another help here. 
Lacking other forms of association, the church is a 
welcome social ground for the farmer and his wife; so 
he conforms easily to the current standard of morality. 
And with this moral tendency and lack of startling 
events, we find the reason for his temperance in speech 
and other habits. 

In the sailor’s life, the opposite conditions obtain. 
His is a late and highly socialised industry. He com- 
bines with other men in elaborately specialised labour for 
the benefit of innumerable widely scattered people. His 


138 HUMAN WORK 


combination is absolute for considerable periods of time, 
and physically isolated from all other social forms. 
The dangers of the profession are great, requiring con- 
stant watchfulness and the most prompt and perfect 
interdependence. From the seamen singing and haul- 
ing together to the quick co-ordination between the 
captain on the bridge and the uttermost sailor on the 
yards, there is this constant interplay and conspicuous 
interdependence. Of course, they develop a high degree 
of comradeship—of course, they stand by one another 
to the last degree of danger. It indicates no greater 
nobility in Jack Jones, who went to sea, over Jedediah 
Jones, who stayed on the farm; it is a quality of his 
industry, that is all. ) 

So with the other traits. The sailor is communally 
fed while engaged in these common activities. The ego 
is not called out in any way. Then, his private share of 
wealth being given him at the same time when he is 
turned loose to provide for himself, he naturally 
pours forth the money freely; a trait well known by all 
the barnacles and borers who infest the sailor ashore, as 
others do the ships at sea. 

The sailor has no wife; he cannot marry as early as 
the farmer, because Jack has to support his wife at 
long range out of his earnings; she being of no service 
in maintaining the family. Or, if married, he must be 
away from his wife for long periods. Thus denied the 
natural relations of the sexes and exposed when ashore 
to the instant swooping down of the parasitic female 
animal in her frankest form, he is, inevitably, “ im- 


CHAPTER SEVEN 139 


moral.” Let Jedediah go to sea and Jack stay at home, 
and you reverse the characteristics of each. 

The intemperance comes under the action of these 
last conditions, long-enforced abstinence and sudden 
profusion; and the profanity is coincident with the 
sudden shocks of excitement in his work, with all the 
jars, difficulties, and dangers involved. For similar 
reasons ox-drovers are less given to profanity than mule- 
drivers. Thus we see the vices and virtues of a given 
profession inhere in its conditions. Individual char- 
acter may fight against it, and there is a difference al- 
ways in the personal expression, but as industrial classes 
the farmer and the sailor manifest certain distinctive 
characteristics involved in their form of industry. 

Miners furnish another conspicuous instance of this 
force. In no class of men—not even in sailors—is al- 
truism, even to heroism, more prominent. Given death 
and danger well-nigh certain, but comrades to be saved, 
and the miners always volunteer at once. If valour and 
self-sacrifice among miners were rewarded as they are in 
some sporadic rescue of the drowning, we should need to 
run a factory of decorations. The miner, like the 
sailor, is engaged in a highly socialised industry. He 
works at great personal sacrifices to promote the social 
welfare. 

The farmer, in his corn, sees tangible immediate food 
for himself and family. The miner sees no such prompt 
advantage in his coal. The farmer, safely and alone, 
pursues his individual labours. The miner, in danger 
and in company, pursues his group labour. They are 


140 HUMAN WORK 


cut off from the rest of the world, the mining group, and 


easily develop a common consciousness. ‘Their danger 
is a common danger, only to be met and overcome by 
common action. Hence they act in common and for 
each other. 

This may be studied in varying degree in all indus- 
tries. The effect of household labour on the growth of 
altruism is even worse than that of farm labour. The 
farmer does in truth connect with the whole world, serve 
the whole world through his products. The domestic 
labourer connects with nothing but the family, serves 
nothing but the family. Absolutely the most primitive 
form of human labour surviving among us is that of the 
woman “ doing her own work ” like the squaw. ‘The 
only enlargement admitted is that of domestic service, 
being a survival of the next lowest form, slave labour. 
This industry, in its shortest of short circuits, develops 
no social spirit whatever; nothing but egoism and 
familism grow from it. 

Altruism, due to other causes, may be felt and mani- 
fested by the domestic worker, but the work does not 
conduce to it. Conversely, when this stage of labour is 
at last abandoned; when we have socialised these anti- 
quated industries; an immense increase of altruism will 
appear. We are so accustomed to think of men as 
egoists, and women as altruists that it will be a blc-v to 
many to advance this position, but seeing that altruism, 
the social spirit, is but the essential condition and result 
of our social co-activities; that only men take part in 
these activities, and that women have been arrested in 


e 


CHAPTER SEVEN 141 


this natural development and forced to remain as they 
began, working in solitude and utter disconnection, for 
their own families solely; it is plain that the world’s 
growth in altruism comes through men as a class, and 
that women as a class contribute to the social spirit 
only an exaggerated familism and egoism. That 
animal instinct shown in “ the maternal sacrifice,’ or 
the devotion to one’s mate of exaggerated sex develop- 
ment, have nothing to do with the larger human love— 
with omniism. 

The two are constantly blended through heredity, 
but the industrial influence of the sexes is as above 
stated, and it is through industrial development 
that our altruism comes. Observe that the nations 
most “humane” are those most advanced in in- 


> are those most 


dustry, and those least ‘ humane’ 
primitive in industry, down to the savage who has 
only the rudiments of either industry or humanity. 
Altruism is recognised by religion as a virtue and 
urged upon us, but it appears in us only in propor- 
tion to our social progress in interrelated service. Our 
own principal religion, Christianity, is altruism incar- 
nate—but it is not altruism understood. It preaches 
altruism as a virtue and a duty, but it does not show 
altruism to be a natural product of certain industrial 
relations and urge upon its followers their entering 
upon those relations as the chief means of developing 
altruism. 

Religion has not showed us the naturalness of altru- 
ism. It has taught that it was natural for man to be 


142 HUMAN WORK 


selfish, and that to be unselfish was a continual struggle, 
needing the grace of God to attain it. When we learn 
at last that the social instincts are as natural as the 
personal, that they are evolved under the same biologi- 
cal laws, that our failure to manifest them in due pro- 
portion is due to unnecessary social conditions quite 
within our power to change—the burden on man’s con- 
science will be lifted forever. 

We shall learn to lay no false stress on altruism as a 
lofty and difficult virtue, but see it to be the spirit of 
civilisation; and the lack of it, the uncivilised egoism 
still so prominent and evilly active, we shall perceive to 
be merely an anachronism, which needs only to be recog- 
nised to be despised, and only to be despised to be out- 
grown. 

A man still maintaining a visible egoism in a period 
of dominant altruism. would feel as uncomfortable as 
aman with a tail. <A tail was “ natural ” to us once,— 
not now. 3 

Another vital error, maintained by our religions, is 
the confusion of altruism, the social spirit, with that 


abnormal action known as “ 


charity ”—** benevolence,” 
* philanthropy.” We are taught to regard the expres- 
sion of this rare and hard-won feeling of altruism as 
requiring us to * sell all we have and give to the poor.” 

Giving to the poor, from direct alms to the subtle 
ramifications of organised charity, bears about the same 
relation to a healthy working altruism that the trans- 
fusion of blood bears to a mother’s nursing a child. 


There are times when a direct transfer of subsistence is 


CHAPTER SEVEN 143 


called for in society, as in some great disaster, like the 
Chicago fire, or Johnstown flood, or awful submersion 
of Galveston. 

So there are cases when one human being may save 

another’s life by giving him his own blood through a 
syringe. But you would find it difficult to raise men to 
a daily level of devotion willing to transfer blood as a 
steady diet to their anemic friends; and it is similarly 
difficult to persuade the healthy working mass of so- 
ciety that any such sacrificial transfer of property is 
right and reasonable. 
_ They are quite correct in this position. Charity is 
not right. It may be necessary at times, but it is not 
a normal organic process. A healthy working altru- 
ism involves no sacrifice of one to another, but the com- 
mon good-will, and common effort for a common good. 
We err in the very word—it should not be “ other- 
ism *—but “ our-ism.”” There is no justice or benefit in 
* robbing Peter to pay Paul,” but there is in each giv- 
ing to all—for all includes each. 

Just as our foolish “ business”? methods deal and 
shuffie money among the rich without adding a cent 
to our wealth, so does our foolish charity deal and 
shuffle it among the poor, with similar uselessness. The 
fact that we are, and always have been, so open to the 
demands of charity, proves our social spirit, but proves 
also that we have not understood its nature and its use. 

One more error that hinders our realisation of this 
great feeling is our persistent misuse of the word “ self.” 

The Ego, the personal consciousness, desires for itself 


144 - - HUMAN WORK 


and strives for itself. The Socio, the social conscious- 
ness, desires for us, for ourself, and strives for society. 
But we, feeling this larger desire and impulse, think it 
is the Ego still at work, and speak of the colossal 
“ Selfishness” of man. It is not Selfishness—it is So- 
cialness ; and he, not knowing what it is, tries to satisfy 
it by satisfying himself. 

The futile attempts of a modern man trying to be 
selfish would be funny if the effects were not so dan- 
gerous. Here he is, with this enormous area of social 
consciousness, this enormous stock of social energy, 
this enormous field of social activity, all lodged in the 
executive machine of one small biped animal. | 

He is awed and impressed by the vast currents of 
feeling that sweep through the social consciousness. 
“Dear me!” he says; “what a great mysterious 
thing is my soul!” It would be mysterious, indeed, 
if John Smith had a soul of that size. He feels the ir- 
resistible pressure of the social energy. ‘“ Ah!” he 
says; “how strong I am!” He launches out into the 
social activities, doing, it may be, his full share of social 
service, but thinking that he is doing it himself, for 
himself. 

And then—poor hungry tortured soul—he tries to 
satisfy the social demands he feels by gratifying his 
own personal desires. The capacity for personal en- 
joyment is extremely limited, and mainly physical. 
Warmth, quiet, cleanliness, food, rest, physical exer- 
cise, and the joys of mating and rearing young; these 
the ego wants, and every ego ought to be guaranteed 


CHAPTER SEVEN 145 


their full gratification. They cost little, they were long 
ago well within the assets of every civilised society. 
But a society wants more. All our higher needs are 
social. “ We” want them, and we shall never be satis- 
fied till ‘‘ we” have them—all of us. 

Suppose the inhabitants of a certain city need more 
rest, or recreation, or entertainments, or better facili- 
ties of communication. The individual citizen feels the 
wants of the city. He cannot satisfy that want in him- 
self till the city is satisfied. The misguided self-styled 
egoist, feeling the social needs, tries to quench the de- 
mand by gratifying himself. He soon reaches personal 
satiety—and is still unsatisfied. Of course. Here is 
another of the alleged “ enigmas” of human life 
cleared up. 

Q. Why is man so inordinately selfish? 

A. Heisn’t. He is social-ish and doesn’t know it. 

Q. Why is man never satisfied in spite of all he gets? 

A. Because he hasn’t found his mouth yet. He is 
hungry for a thousand, and tries to give a thousand 
_ dinners to himself to quench that hunger. 

When humanity sees its own governing spirit, recog- 
nises its own consciousness as a common consciousness, 
and goes practically to work to meet its common needs, 
the human soul will find peace. It will not stop grow- 
ing, but it will-become healthy, and grow right. The 
upward reach of the human soul will carry always its 
unfulfilled aspirations, but that is but an open road, a 
glorious ever-spreading opportunity; the way of life; 
a very different thing from the wailings and convulsions 


146 HUMAN WORK 
of a crippled and imprisoned soul, struggling for air— 
for food—for room to grow. 

Each human being represents humanity. Each has 
within him as much of the human soul as he can feel 
and express, and if he increases his expression he will 
feel more. But to call that great Social Spirit “ mine ” 
to try to explain it by any sort of self-bound theory ; 
to try to exercise or gratify it within the limits of the 
individual life—is almost too absurd for illustration. 
Some private pipe connecting with the ocean, and i 
owner of the pipe prating of ‘the mystery of ° ro 
tides,”’ is a possible simile. 

The pressure of the great thing has been so beyond 
our visible ego that we have been forced to account for 
it by the hypothesis of personal immortality. ‘There 
was evidently no room for the soul—no explanation of 
the soul—in one human life as we saw it before us. 
** But,” said we, “if we make a human life long enough | 
there will be room for the soul! That will give us time 
to understand it, and to gratify these quenchless aspira- 
tions, these boundless desires.” 

It did not occur to us that if we made it wide enough 
it would have the same effect. Our illimitable egoism, 
being unable to satisfy its own demands by any earthly 
means, has postulated an eternal ego, with whole 
ranges of planetary ‘systems to feed in, and hopes, in 
course of eternity, time not being enough, to satisfy 
Itself! 

And so, postponing the problems it could not answer 
to a conveniently extensive after life; and considering 


CHAPTER SEVEN 147 


its own agonies and contortions in this life as part and 
parcel of the great game between God and the Devil; it 
has struggled and suffered on; pushed relentlessly up- 
ward by the organic social forces, held down most 
cruelly by its self-made bands of iron; the rigid clamps 
of primitive ignorance renewed from generation to gen- 
eration, in spite of the increasing agony of the grow- 
ing soul. 

No wonder we are more unhappy than we used to be; 
we are bigger, much bigger, but the ego hasn’t grown at 
all. The social spirit of a small young society could 
masquerade as an ego without too painful inconveni- 
ence; but the social spirit of the world to-day is so 
vast, so strong, so much nearer to expression in our 
more developed minds, so much more commonly felt, 
owing to our more equal education, that its confinement 
to an ego is too agonising to endure,—it is simply im- 
possible. 

Therefore we see the steady growth of ‘“ public 
spirit,”—‘“ civic feeling,’ national and international 
movements toward general improvement; more and 
more individuals, rich and poor, devoting themselves to 
social service; the growing objection to war; the tend- 
ency to distribute as well as to accumulate millions; the 
development of ‘ the home church ”; and even—most 
hopeful of all these splendid signs of life—even the ris- 
ing current of organisation among women. 

This Ego hypothesis might as well be laid aside at 
once and forever. We are not separate creatures at all, 
our life is ours, and only so to be rightly lived. It is so 


148 HUMAN WORK 


easy,—leaving off the ego-theory,—to observe the 
natural growth of the social spirit in its ever-broaden- 
ing, steady pressure and in those bursts of irresistible 
energy we call passion. 

Any intense human feeling we call a passion, using 
the word to distinguish certain main lines of feeling 
common to us all, as “the maternal passion,” “ the 


> and those broad divisions Hate, Fear, 


tender passion,’ 
Envy, Remorse, Ambition, Grief, Revenge. Also some 
special gust of intensity in minor lines of feeling is 
distinguished by the same word, ‘‘ a passion of grati- 


”» “a passion of re- 


tude,” ‘*‘a passion of loneliness, 
bellion,” or of avarice. 

Our words climb slowly along the facts, changing 
as our perception changes, and always behind. Heat 
as a fact we observed and used long before we knew 
what to call it, if, indeed, what we call it now is any 
more true than it was before. But, whether “ a fluid ” 
named Caloric, or ‘‘a force’? named Heat, the fact 
which we all know and use remains the same. It did 
its work in the world as fully before we came as after; 
before we named it at all as after. But to us, to our 
consciousness, the thing does not exist until we see it, — 
and, seeing’, name. 

“The maternal passion” is as strong a force in 
mother-wasp and mother-whale as in the most sophis- 
ticated and analytic mother-human. These passions are 
simply accumulations of stored energy along certain 
much-used lines, and serve to keep up a steady flow of 
the desired energy when there is no immediate stimulus 


CHAPTER SEVEN 149 


to call for it. In the maternal passion, for instance, 
long ages of iron experience have developed a certain 
average of watchfulness and care even when the young 
are visibly safe, and a surprising fund of power and 
fury in defence of the young even when the exciting 
cause is comparatively small. It keeps up a safer 
average of care and defence than if the feeling were 
merely reactionary, and has therefore been developed in 
surviving species. 

Society, the vast and varied organism in which we 
live, calls for a devotion more single and fearless than 
that even of the mother; for a steady average of 
service and a sudden fund of fury in defence, a love and 
care and courage higher than any heretofore required ; 
and as it needs such a feeling it gets it. Those societies 
having it most highly developed survive. We have 
called it many names; let us now give it another, the 
Social Passion. 

We are most familiar with its branches, minor and 
local, and with its blazing heights of expression; but 
the governing line of feeling is as simple as the animal 
mother’s. She, for the sake of race-preservation, 
must feed and guard and teach the young, therefore 
she manifests the maternal passion. We, for the sake 
of race-preservation, must feed and guard and teach 
each other, therefore we manifest the social passion. 

One common form is what we call “the sense of 
duty.” A single animal has no “ duty,” he acts and 
reacts under direct stimuli, and so in large measure does 
the savage. But social maintenance requires a steady 


150 HUMAN WORK 


service without immediate and apparent cause; an even 
standard of merit in the work done; a reliability in the 
fulfilment of the allotted task, and, at times, a tremen- 
dous fervour of exertion and heroism. The “ feeling ” 
in us which urges to these acts is as deep and unreason- 
able as any other “ feeling ’”’; it is a genuine passion. 

The irritation of a mother at any criticism of her 
child, however plainly merited, is perfectly paralleled by 
the irritation of the citizen at any criticism of his coun- 
try. The instant rush to the rescue of an injured “ fel- 
low creature,” co-creature, member of the same great 
body, is as blind and instinctive as the mother’s rush 
to save the child. It finds its most familiar and acute 
form in the soldier “ dying for his country.” Devo- 
tion to “‘ a cause” of any sort, a class, a club, a corps, 
a union, the intense ‘“ co-ability ” of the human 
creature, this is but manifestation of the social passion. 

The hero, the statesman, the patriot, the public 
saviour and servant of any sort are conspicuous 
examples of this feeling at its height; the reformer and 
religious leader, from the most mistaken enthusiasts to 
the greatest prophets and teachers, are all exponents 
of this mightiest of forces, the social passion. A 
blind, deep, instinctive pressure, a must in the very 
blood, a feeling bred of centuries of social contact and 
interdependence, this is what kindles the great hearts 
who live or die to serve the world. | 

Where it touches the present subject is in its relation 
to Work, of which indeed it is the immediate conscious 
cause. 


Lae ee 


CHAPTER SEVEN 151 


The maternal passion does not manifest itself merely 
in bursts of wild self-sacrifice, but speaks plainest in 
the patient, steady labour with which it serves the 
young. So the social passion, while most conspicuous 
in Horatius at the bridge, is as valuable in the engineer 
at the lever, or the steersman at the helm. 

The Love of Work is one great manifestation of the 
Social Passion. ‘The maternal function urging to ex- 
pression, this gives the rich joy of nursing one’s child, 
and that almost inconceivable torment of the black 
past where the starving baby cried before the chained 
mother’s bursting breasts. The social function urging 
to expression, this gives the rich joy of work accom- 
plished and the aching, quenchless misery of work 
denied. Fulfilment of function, that is Work, and, 
forbidden, the poor functionary aches like a tied leg. 

We may trace this suffering from work denied 
through all the uneasy contortions of “ the leisure 
class” to the final surrender to that social paralysis, 
ennut. Healthy physical impulses, checked in nat- 
ural expression, twitch and cramp the unused member. 
Healthy social impulses, checked in natural expression, 
twitch and cramp in similar agony and distortion. 
Always the impulse to do—the human instinct, the 
social passion. ‘Then the inhibition from mistaken 
theories and false ideas, the individual checking his 
healthy social impulses as perversely as the religious 
ascetic checks his healthy physical impulses. 

And as the ascetic, bottling his life up, froths off 
in wild visions and fanatical activity, so the social 


152 HUMAN WORK 


ascetic lives in a whirling rush of useless exertion and 
excitement, always seeking in what he calls “ society ” 
that true social contact and social action which he 
never finds. And as the body of the ascetic wastes 
and dwarfs and deforms under the unnatural life his 
gross delusions bring him to, so does society suffer under 
the diseased conditions engendered by this fatuous 
mistake. 

More firmly and reassuringly we can trace the social 
passion in its true expression. Clear and strong it 
has left its mark on every age, and rises steadily with 
our rising socialisation. The co-consciousness with 
its beautiful result in love; “ a fellow-feeling makes us 
wondrous kind’; one touch of nature makes the 
whole world kin”; the co-activity and its resultant 
virtues and abilities; the need for expression of those 
* co-abilities ”; the urge toward exertion, ultimately 
seen to be in the social interest, but pushing from within 
as a passion; this feeling it is which made Palissy the 
Potter break up his furniture to insure his glaze; which 
drove Galileo to his studies in defiance of the Church; 
which fed the fire with prohibited books and gave up 
martyrs by the score to die because they would let out 
what was in them; they must. f 

We see it clearest in the arts and sciences, in the 
inventor, the explorer, the teacher of new truth. But 
what drives these conspicuously specialised social serv- 
ants to their work is the same force which holds the 
steersman to his wheel, the engineer to his lever, the 
sentry to his post: the power of functional expression ; 


CHAPTER SEVEN 153 


stronger in us than any other force, as our social 
nature is stronger in us than the nature of the beast. 

If we would recognise our “ human nature” to be 
our * social nature,” and that what we have so scorned 
and pitied as “ poor human nature” is not human at 
all, but merely animal,—ego-nature,—it would alter 
our whole range of thought on this vital matter. 

The social spirit is not “ poor,’”’ but bounteously rich 
and strong. It rises grandly to meet great emergen- 
cies, but is felt most continually in our impulse to work, 
to do what we are made for, what we are together for; 
that which constitutes the primal condition and line of 
development for human life. 


Meus THE SOCIAL BODY 
Summary 


Likeness between spirit and form, mutual modification. 
Love modified by form. The soul human. The body 
of society our manufactured thmgs. Bones of dead 
societies. The thing made. Animal’s things all grow 
on him. Society secretes its material form. The thing 
marks the age. Axe-man, swords-man, pen-man, etc. 
Value of detachability of tools. Potentiality of human 
body. Value of exchangeability of tools. Vehicle of 
common use. Reaction of thing made on user. Body 
a machine we have to learn. Thing promotes further 
action. Growth in work. Cloth. Effect on life. 
Value and effect of machines. Pleasure of transmit- 
ting energy. Mistaken objection to machinery. Re- 
version to “hand work” foolish. Social progress con- 
ditioned by mechanical. We are now capable of far 
better living and have the means for it. American ad- 
vance. Machine does for society what the cerebellum 
does for the body. Our power to facilitate social prog- 
ress. “Truth m art” and “ better housing.” Re- 
strictions due to false concepts, not to conditions. 


VDL 
THE SOCIAL BODY 


WE have seen that in every living creature there is a 
close and vivid likeness between its spirit and its form, 
between body and soul. Given such a spirit and it 
tends to evolve such a form. Given such a form and 
it tends to evolve such a spirit. The form must limit 
and modify the spirit. 

Fortunately forms can change; and spirit, to grow, 
continually discards old forms and makes new. If 
anything succeeds in fixing a given form unchanged, 
so is the spirit within it imprisoned and checked in 
growth forever. It is for this reason doubtless that 
the primal force has been so busy making its endless 
procession of forms. First we have the universe set 
whirling with great suns and their spattering planets ; 
then the planet flames, crackles, cools, crusts over, and 
so fringes out in all manner of soft green, and follow- 
ing these we have life cut looser, freer, in animal forms; 
lastly the social. 

Imagine the sun as loving; it can but shine and glow 
to express that love. The dog loves, and can but leap 
and lick and wag his tail, fetch and carry, watch and 
fight to show it. The man loves, and in the manifold 
activities made possible by his form, by the special de- 
velopment of the brain, he can express that principal 

157 


158 HUMAN WORK 

force more deeply, widely, fully. The spirit of every 
living thing is expressed through its form and limited 
‘by it. 7 

Humanity, if a living creature, has a soul and a 
body. The soul we all know; we call it rightly the 
human soul. Where is the body of that soul? Not in 
our little bundle of arms and legs—we had that in full 
career before the human soul was possible. That is the 
body of an animal, capable of expressing as much 
spirit as any animal, perhaps a little more than a large 
ape. If we had no medium of expression but these 
physical bodies there could be no Society, no Humanity, 
and no social soul. 

That last and best expression of creative force finds 
its material form in the things we make in the manu- 
factured world. Take from a society its body, the 
structure of brick, stone, and iron, wood, cloth, leather, 
glass, paper,—all that elaborate compound of materials 
in which we live,—reduce it to a mere congregation of 
naked animals, and what would ensue? ‘Those animals — 
would either rebuild in desperate haste the material 
forms in which alone Society exists, or they would relapse 
into individual savagery. If too small a group, or too” 
highly specialised to reproduce the social body to live 
in, they would be unable even to revert to savagery and 
would simply die. ‘The Social Soul we have seen to be 
a common consciousness developed by common activ- 
ities. The Social Body is a common material form, also 
developed by common activities. Both appear in propor- 
tion to the extent and development of those activities. 


CHAPTER EIGHT 159 


As house and vehicle for the spirit of an animal has 
been slowly evolved the cunning mechanism of bone 
and muscle, with all its constituent organs, in which a 
man lives. It is but a combination of chemicals and 
minerals, and when the soul is out of it they disintegrate 
and revert to lower combinations. As house and 
vehicle for the spirit of society has been slowly 
evolved the more cunning and elaborate mechanism of 
wood and cloth, brick, stone, metal—in which Hu- 
manity lives. It too is but a combination of chemicals 
and minerals, and when its inhabiting humanity is gone, 
it too disintegrates and reverts, though more slowly. 
The bones of dead societies remain to us in stone 
and glass and pottery, as do the bones of extinct ani- 
mals. 

An animal life, once started in the germ, goes on 
growing, 7. ¢., making to itself a body suitable to its 
soul. If you arrest the growth of the body,—if, for 
instance, a baby’s head were cased in iron,—you would 
arrest the growth of the soul. It would have one, 
potentially ; that is, it would if its brain had room for 
it, but actually you would have checked it. So the 
social life, once started, goes on assimilating material 
particles and recombining them in mechanical form, 
enlarging its functions as it enlarges the structure 
through which alone they become possible. Society 
builds its body for good or ill. 

A piece of human creation—a manufactured article 
—is the record, the physical manifestation of our 
humanness. By these things, reading backward, does 


160 HUMAN WORK 


the ethnologist reconstruct the vanished races as the 
paleontologist reconstructs a vanished beast from fos- 
sil bones. A bead, a knife, a needle, some torque or 
bracelet, a broken jar,—and the lost people rise be- 
fore us. 

Man, to be such and such, requires such and such 
things, and evolves them as naturally as the sea-beast 
makes its shell. It grows from him—so do our manu- 
factures grow from us. Society secretes, as it were, 
the manufactured article. We need clothes, for in- 
stance, a purely social need. The individual animal 
does not need clothes. He carries his wardrobe on his 
back. Never a solitary creature in clothes. Clothes 
are for other people more than the wearer. Other 
people are required to make them. Even in a one- 
generation-reversion, as of some hunting hermit of 
modern times,—back he goes to buckskin! He cannot 
shear and card, weave and spin, bleach and dye, cut and 
sew. Back he goes to borrow some other animal’s 
skin; and, if he stayed a hunting hermit for enough 
generations, back would he go to his own skin and its 
natural growth of hair. 

But the increasing social faculties and desires— 
the love of ornament, the sense of decency, the need 
of concealment, the demand for a more fluent and 
delicate expression of personality—these call for 
clothes, and society evolves them through a thousand 
trades. 

A trade is a social function, and clothing is a social 
product as hair is a product of the individual body. 


CHAPTER EIGHT 161 


In the thing made lies our social history so fully that, 
had we a full line of specimens, we should need no 
other monument of progress. 

The progress of each age rests on its things: the 
unchipped flint and the polished; the bronze knife and 
the steel; the wonder-working wheel (how much of 
social progress goes ‘on wheels”!); the bow and 
arrow, the sword, the axe, the spade,—small things for 
separate use at first,—and then the marvellous, monster 
engines of to-day; they are at once the means and the 
record of progress. There is a phase of thought which 


66 


despises “‘ material things,” and prattles ardently of 
our “ spiritual nature.” But in steady-marching ages 
of coincidence man’s spiritual nature manifests itself 
through material things, and grows by means of them. 
The ships of Tyre made possible that Pheenician civili- 
sation which has so affected the Grecian and all that 
follow. The roads of Rome knit and fastened her 
Empire to the ends of the earth. 

Axe-man, bow-man, swords-man, plough-man, boat- 
man, pen-man,—there is a steady likeness between man’s 
things and man. As there is the same likeness between 
the spirit and the body of each animal, so man, having 
the new, wide, aspiring, endless, social soul, manifests 
its growth in ceaseless progression of manufacture, in 
developing this vast body of Society. The human 
soul is greater than the animal’s because it has a 
greater body to live in—complex, universal. 

One marvellous power that is ours by virtue of these 
things is that whereas they do not grow on us per- 


162 HUMAN WORK 
sonally, we remain somewhat free of their inexorable 
reaction. 

A beast depending mainly on digging for his liveli- 
hood, as the mole, is relentlessly modified to claws. 
Paw, arm and shoulder, neck and head, the body, the 
fur, the eyes,—he is a digger, and the spirit within 
him is a contented digger, too—needs must. 

Once in a permanent form the spirit accepts it and 
stops growing. 

Man digs mightily, but spade and pick do not grow 
on him. He takes them up, he lays them down; he 
substitutes the axe, the scythe, the flail. And so he 
does not become hopelessly the spade-holder. Too 
much of one kind of tool, and we have the “ Man with 
the Hoe.” 

With this rich fluency of attach- and detachability 
we have sped up the ages of social evolution with an 
ease and swiftness inconceivable of any other animal 
whose machinery is so inalienably attached to his spirit 
that it takes slow centuries to change him. This is 
what gives the subtle beauty to the human body, its 
measureless potentiality. Every other animal’s body 
is a perfect representation of its blended activities, 
greater or less. The hound, the cat, the stag, the 
horse, the swan, each speaks to us of its activities, each 
form is an embodied motion. But each in its degree is 
final; being that motion or those motions, it cannot 
be others; its personal perfection is its limit. Man’s 
body is an almost limitless possibility. He is the 
handle of innumerable tools. The upright, balanced 


CHAPTER EIGHT 163 


trunk leaves the legs free for all possible movement ; 
the high-hung, wide-reaching arms with branching 
fingers are ten-fold elephant trunks; he can perform 
more kinds of actions than any other creature. 

But the distinctive power of these actions involves 
always the thing made. A collection of human bodies 
pure and simple would tell you little of their social 
stage. But a collection of the tools and weapons of 
the man would tell you what he was and where. 

With the detachability comes the great characteristic 
of exchangeability, the ‘ ” of human things; 
the social body is necessarily usable by all. There is 


* our-ness 


no vexed question of possession with the beast. His 
teeth and claws are his indeed; he cannot lend or give, 
and none can rob him. His “ dogness” is a little 
bundle all his own, but our ‘ 
wide-flung tools of ours, made by one, used by another, 
profited in by all. * 

This is again our infinite advantage. If the protean 
change of characteristics made possible to us by tool- 


‘“man-ness ”’ lies in these 


chest and armory were possible to any other creature 
we should not hold our easy supremacy. The dying 
leader of the wolf-pack cannot hand his superior teeth 
to the next one, or produce sudden wings and lend them 
to his followers. The distributability of our tools 
gives us the limitless flux of power which is human. 
One man makes swords. for a thousand, and each sword 
spreads the sword-power far and wide. The needle, 
the pen, al! individual tools, may be used by many in 
turn, to the advantage of all. 


164 HUMAN WORK 


Even more do we see this advantage in anything 
which may be used by many at once. Here indeed is 
humanness made manifest. Men, separate men, may 
swim as well as some animals, or ride a log, perhaps a 
hollowed one. But man, the human creature, man 
socialised, make for themself the ship, a swimming 
body for the social soul, and in that one material prod- 
uct of humanity les unmeasured share of our real 
growth and greatness. 

Only men together can make it, with ages of gradual 
evolution and relentless elimination of the unfit, with 
elaborate specialisation and co-ordination of effort; 
only man together and in similar complex relation can 
use it. And because of this larger range of usability is 
its larger value. More persons can use it, and for a 
longer time; it is a large and lasting piece of the social 
structure. So of the road, the bridge, the hall,— 
whatever is open to the largest use by the most people 
for the longest time, this is of the largest value to 
society ; as statue, picture, music, book. In direct prac- 
tical result these common products for our common use 
minimise effort and maximise gain, and in the living 
miracle of their use they steadily react upon the user 
and make him something nearer to the power that made 
them. The shiny-bladed knife in the hand of the eager 
boy cries to him to cut, to carve, to do a thousand 
things; and as he uses it, skill, the human skill bred 
by long ages of knife-using, is born anew in him. 
Ward has shown this—achievement embodied in object. 

The pillared temple, visible product of the human 


CHAPTER EIGHT 165 


soul in purest, proudest aspiration, reacts always on 
those who come within, lifting their spirits to its plane, 
to each according to his power of receiving. In our 
made things lies that much of our humanness, and as 
we use them we grow by that much more human; in 
this reactive power lies the desirability of the Thing, 
and its importance. The power of “ mind over mat- 
ter” is commonly observed, but the effect of matter 
upon mind, the reaction of the body upon the spirit, 
is not so clear to us. We see the human spirit laying 
violent hands on clay and wood and iron, and building 
for itself a visible, tangible form. We do not see so 
well this visible form steadily and inexorably reacting 
upon the imprisoned spirit. 

The made thing is the vehicle, record, and monument 
of human progress. The things we make are nearer to 
the human soul than is the physical body. That body 
is but a machine in which our nerve currents have run 
so long and intimately that the act is unconscious, and 
we say “I did this,” not “ my hand did it.” 

If a baby could express his relation to his body in 
plain words, we should find him getting acquainted with 
it, “ learning it” as one learns a bicycle or a sewing- 
machine. He can make it work, but he has to learn 
how, as he would have to learn how to row or shoot. 

Moreover, It has its tendencies and habits with which 
he has to respectfully acquaint himself that he may 
promote or check or change them; the tendencies and 
habits of a long-established animal mechanism, in which 
the human soul is quartered. The tools and imple- 


166 HUMAN WORK 
ments in the use of which les our humanness are 
scarcely more foreign to us than his hands and feet 
were to the baby, or than some new combination of 
muscular action is to the adult. We have to learn to 
act through sword and spear, spade and plough, knife 
and axe, as we had to learn to act through muscle, cord, 
and bone, and they become as automatically natural to 
us in due time. 

The physical body is not an end but a means. Life 
is the end, action; the body is what you do it with. So 


these material forms we make are not ends, but means. — 


Human life is the end, and these things are what we do 
it with. The expression of force through higher 
forms, that is life’s line of progress. 

Our creations are all to do something in, or with, or 
from. Even the most perfect form of art stands as 
an inspiration to other human beings, is a means to 
better action, better living for us all. Every human 
product is an instrument, in using which we can more 
fully express the divine spirit. A house is: not a final 
end. We do not build a house as a crowning achieve- 
ment and then sit and wait upon it for the rest of life— 
or at least we should not! We build a house to live in, 
that we may work. Human life is not a means of pro- 
moting house-building; house-building is a means of 
promoting human life. 

Book, picture, statue, these are our fruit, our prod- 
uct, evolved through us as a means of further growth. 
Our “ civilised” life to-day, the consciousness of an 
“educated,” “cultivated” person, is developed by 


Se SEE 


CHAPTER EIGHT 167 


contact with the things in which previous human beings 
expressed their measure of life and passed it on to us. 

Some brain is born with new cellular development 
which enables it to receive impressions from mountain 
scenery, which scenery had hitherto. failed to impress 
the less developed brain. The brain impressed must 
express the force received, must transmit it in a ma- 
terial form. According to its capacity it works to 
do this, producing picture or poem or prose descrip- 
tion. That material form continues to transmit the 
impression received to those whose brains are developed 
in comparative similarity, and the race is gradually 
opened to the stimulus of this aspect of nature, and 
by so much is greater, wiser, able to do more. 

Human work, all of it, is a means to further ex- 
pression. If we ask “to what end,” we can only 
reply that as far as our lit circle of perception goes 
life has no end. But its direction is plain, and its 
method; to receive more and more of the forces of life 
as the brain becomes more widely and delicately sus- 
ceptible, to express more and more of the forces of life 
in our work, and so further to develop that brain,—that 
is the process. The savage has not brain development 
enough to “ see God” with even as much as we, or as 
little; he is but dimly and narrowly affected by the 
currents of divine force. But such energy as he does 
receive prompts him to work, and as he works he de- 
velops further brain power. In working is human 
growth, and in its visible forms is the permanence and 
transmissibility of each advance. 


168 HUMAN WORK 


Take cloth, for instance, as an illustration of the 
value of the thing made. Imagine it out of human 
life. See its relation to the human skin, both in 
clothing and cleanliness—fancy man with neither shirt, 
towel, nor handkerchief! We revert at once to leather 
and foul habits. No carpets, no hangings, no banners 
and flags, no sheeted beds, no daintiness in eating, no 
subtle play of feeling in our dress—down would go 
human history backward, ravelling out to first prin- 
ciples. Cloth is a social tissue which enables us to 
come close and slip smoothly in our complex inter- 
action. Leather means solitude and living out of 
doors. Civilisation is inwoven with the twisted threads ; 
textile manufacture is a social function. 

These material forms which humanity makes are not 
gross and ignoble, as the blind asceticism of the past 
supposed; they are humanity’s living body, and should 
be lovingly and reverently regarded, most honourably 
and gladly constructed, as the intimate avenues of 
spiritual growth for us all. Human production is 
marked plainly higher than that of lower animals be- 
cause it is in common. One makes alone for many to 
use; or, as we progress still further, many make to- 
gether for still more to use. . 

Beyond even that, we construct the complex imple- 
ments of further construction, and make machines. 
Man’s first step up was in the detachable tool, though 
but a stick or stone. From the hand-thrown stone to 
the far-flung lyddite shell is a clear line of mechanical 
evolution, in which each thing made held the thought 


CHAPTER EIGHT 169 


which made it and suggested further possibility. From 
the twirling spindle to the many-loomed mill; from the 
stylus to the press,—this is familiar ground in fact, 
but all untrodden in its rich significance. 

Nowhere have we more misused, misunderstood, and 
blasphemed the laws of human life than in our attitude 
toward machinery. Measured by any standard you 
will, as low as that of individual physical comfort, as 
high as that of the widest social service, human prog- 
ress, lying in the same line as all evolution, involves 
the constant adaptation of means to ends with con- 
servation of energy. Most energy is spent with small- 
est result at the level where the mole digs, each for 
himself, with his tools growing on him. The spade is 
higher than the claw, and the modern earth-devouring 
excavator is higher than the spade. Some digging is 
necessary for the maintenance of our physical lives. 
The more human energy we spend in digging the less 
remains for further development. To dig is not our 
purpose here, but to grow. Therefore social evolu- 
tion quietly relegates digging to the lower automatic 
functions, making the mechanical organs by which the 
most digging can be done by the least men, that more 
and more of us may leave the level of the mole. 

Of all things made, the things we make things with 
are most vitally and distinctively human. Something 
of the truth of this may be seen in the larger and deeper 
pleasure given by the use of the higher tool, and, even 
more clearly, in the higher kind of man developed by 
the higher tool. The digger with the attached claws 


170 HUMAN WORK 
is but a mole. The digger with the detachable spade 


is but an “ unskilled labourer,” 
that spade but a simple smith. The digger with the 


great excavator is an engineer, and its maker a skilled 


and even the maker of 


machinist and inventor. ‘The ox-driver is not to be 
compared with the engine-driver or the bargeman with 
the admiral. 

Now the mole, or the unskilled labourer, may be as 
“happy,” as an individual, as the skilled machinist. 
But the measure of their value is in this. The mole is 
incapable of further combinations. The unskilled la- 
bourer is capable only of a low order of combinations. 
The more specialised brain of the inventor is capable 
of higher combinations. Of such as he a democracy can 
be built; he is raised far along the line of social evolu- 
tion. The childish, primitive pride in a “* hand-made ” 
individual product is most ignoble compared to the 
modern pride in a common product through complex 
means. 

The brain to make and to use a complex machine is 
the brain to make and to use a complex social order; 
and in that growing social order lies our line of duty 
as a human race. In the inexorable working of our 
own machines we learn law newly; as in our works of 
art we learn beauty newly. Kipling has treated of this 
in “* MacAndrews’ Hymn.” 

The relation of our complex mechanical products 
with our minds and hearts is as clear as the relation 
between any animal’s spirit and body. ‘The increasing 
pleasure is as clear as the increasing use. ‘* Man loves 


CHAPTER EIGHT | i kygi 


power.” Of course. He loves to transmit energy, to 
feel it pouring through. He loves it well in his own 

physical exertions: to swim is a pleasure, to row alone 
is a pleasure, but to row in a racing eight is a greater 
pleasure. To sail a catboat is a pleasure, to command 
the flagship a greater pleasure. The captain loves his 
ship, and loves to work her, to feel the complex mechan- 
ism move in answer to his thought and will, and the 
prompt co-ordination of all the men whose combined 
efforts move the great machine. And the kind of man 
who can be a good captain or a good sailor is a higher 
social constituent than a South Sea Islander, though 
the latter could outswim him. 

Our general feeling of condemnation for machinery 
is a kind of social asceticism, a reaction from our mis- 
use of the social body, just as the personal asceticism 
of earlier times was a reaction against misuse of the 
personal body. In our blind ignorance of the real 
social life and its laws, in our persistent maintenance of 
a rudimentary egoism, we have claimed private owner- 
ship in these exquisitely social products, and have 
striven to restrict their mighty multiplication of wealth 
to private consumption. Such sublime treason has 
roused instinctive reaction in the public consciousness, 
and we blindly include the machine in our hatred of its 
vile abuse, as did the early Christian in his condemna- 
tion of the body. Partly owing to this, and partly 
owing to our cruel form of specialisation, we asso- 
ciate evil with machinery, and, with our usual help- 
less reversionary tendency, look back fondly to 


172 HUMAN WORK 


the time when each man or woman worked alone “ by 
hand.” 

These theorists should be set down in some wilderness 
for a while with only their hands to help them, as a 
lesson in social chronology. The hand is at its best in 
the early Paleolithic period, or even back of that, when 
it could do duty as a foot on occasion. As the hand 
made and mastered the tool, society has grown. As the 
tool became the machine, society has grown better. In 
the vast machine, moved by tireless natural forces, and 
guided by the specialised brain and hand, we find the 
highest expression of nature’s steady tendency to 
minimise effort and maximise results. 

When we appreciate the true use and nature of all 
this machinery, realising that by means of its measure- 
less service we can now apply almost all our power to 
the conscious development of society, we shall find it to 
be an unmixed blessing, of value beyond our dreams. 
Seeing that the social soul needs such and such a body, 
and is developed with it, and that we have at last the 
means of evolving that body at a speed hitherto impos- 
sible, we can now utilise these unlimited forces to facili- 
tate our growth with results that will make previous 
historic progress seem stationary. It is not as if 
we were required to force long cycles of evolution, 
to hasten the steps of nature, and hurry mankind 
over slow steps of necessary ascent,—we are there 
now ! 

Society being an organic whole, social progress 
being ours in common and exquisitely transmissible, the 


CHAPTER EIGHT 173 


material forms of that progress and vehicles of trans- 
mission being ready to hand, we can, by our present | 
means of rapid production and distribution of these 
material forms, open the way to such swift advance 
of civilisation as the world has never seen. The spirit 
of modern society is capable of a plane of life far 
beyond the present conditions wherein we find that 
spirit gagged and blinded by the fossil Ego concept, 
that body inconceivably dwarfed and twisted by the 
efforts of each ego to occupy it all himself. 

The right relation of spirit and body in the animal 
gives health and beauty and power, and in our human 
life the right relation of the social spirit and body is 
as important. A healthy, growing, social life con- 
stantly re-creates its body as does the physical life, and 
_ our American civilisation shows this beyond all others 
in its rapid adoption of new material forms and proc- 
esses. The constant demand for easier and swifter 
mechanism is as natural and healthful in society as it 
is in a physical body, and physical evolution has moved 
on that line continually. 

The passing over of individual effort to the auto- 
matic action of machinery is analogous to the con- 
stant passing over of conscious cerebral action to the 
less expensive automatic management of lower brain 
centres—the development of “ habit.”” The body is 
not the man, and brick and mortar are not Society ; but 
their connection is as intimate and vital. And as the 
soul of a man is grievously injured or equally benefited 
by the condition and use of his body, so is Society 


174 HUMAN WORK 


affected for good or ill by the mechanica! forms in which 
it lives, their condition and their use. 

Recognising as the first quality distinguishing the 
social body from the physical, that it is made by com- | 
mon action and open to common use, and recognising 
that the proper use of the body has a reactive effect in 
developing the soul, we have here a means of promoting 
social growth so prodigious in its scope and speed as 
to be fairly dizzying. We have, as usual, felt this 
great social truth, even though not understanding it, 
and our groping efforts in its pursuance are seen in 
two main lines: that which urges to “ truth in art ” in 
our common crafts; to making things beautiful, true, 
good, that all may be improved by them, and in our 
blind but earnest effort to provide “‘ better housing for 
the poor,” with all that that implies. 

We have seen that the slum tends to make the crim- 
inal, and that the school, bath, playground, museum, 
library, art gallery, free access to the best products of 
society, tend to make the better citizen; but we have 
not seen the large and simple principle involved. 

Each thing made is an embodiment of social energy, 
and transmits it to the user, be it a fork or a fiddle. A 
noble and beautiful work ennobles and beautifies the 
beholder, listener, reader, occupant,—the user. All 
especially general social structures, or those glorious 
deposits of energy known as works of art, as well as 
all the materials of knowledge, are valuable in pro- 
portion to their free and public use. 

The more people circulate in their great social body 


CHAPTER EIGHT 175 


the more socialised they become. This we are doing 
much to promote in our free schools, libraries, museums, 
etc., but we do not begin to appreciate the possibilities 
involved, being impeded, as usual, by our prior con- 
cepts, Want theory and Pay concept in particular. 
The increased facilities of travel of our time, for in- 
stance, which should be enlarging the mind of the 
public as well as increasing its wealth, are greatly re- 
stricted in application by these errors. The people 
who administer our railroads are allowed by popular 
consent to “ 
their property as bound in the first instance to “ pay ” 


own”? them, and as owners, regarding 


them, they maintain as high a list of charges as “ the 
traffic will bear.” When we recognise locomotion as 
a prime social necessity, these ribbons of steel and their 
_ rolling-stock as part of the social body, and traffic and 
travel as social advantages rather than individual,— 
yes, social necessities,—then we shall encourage the 
widest possible use of these facilities. 

We have but to recognise the vital connection be- 
tween the growing social body and the growing social 
soul, and that the soul not only makes the body, but is 
made by it, to apply our immense material gain to our 
whole people. ‘The results will be what our discouraged 
and patient minds are apt to call “* too good to be true.” 


Peete NATURE OF WORK (I) 
Summary 


Familiarity of Work confusing to true thoughts, our 
general attitude due to false concepts. Veblen’s 
theory. Theory of Hebrew religion. Occasional dim 
perception of value of work. Effect of ego concept 
and pay concept. Effect of organic concept. Effect 
of Want Theory. Main thesis of author on Work. 
Physical organic action. Heart, as _ illustration. 
Social organic action. Individual consciousness no 
obstacle. Social circulation. Men not self-support- 
ing. Waste, parasitism, disease. Evolution of Work. 
Universal transmission of energy. Appearance of 
consciousness. Feeling and action. Pleasure in sen- 
sation and action. Society the greatest life-form, 
greatest action, greatest pleasure. Social nourishment 
for worker, and true adjustment. Accumulation of 
social energy. Limitation of individual animal. Geo- 
metrical increase m social efficiency up to the sixth 
power. Increase of stimulus. Increase of terest. 
Storage and transmission of society energy. Work of 
art. Devotion to country. Bee and Ant. Proper hu- 
man relation and action. Child’s instinct to work. Re- 
sistless working instinct of great specialist. Radium. 
The teacher, scientific discoverer, etc. Our workers 
not supplied with social energy. Extinction of London 
labourer. Want Theory again. Our dinner. Social 
nutrition collective. Discharge of surplus energy not 
an exertion. | 


IX 
THE NATURE OF WORK (If) 


Worx is the most prominent feature of human life. 
So large a majority of human beings spend most of 
their lives at work that the few diseased and defective 
members of society who do not need scarcely be con- 
sidered. As usual, the prominence and constant insist- 
ence on the facts about work have prevented our think- 
ing much about it, and, when we did think, our mistaken 
basic concepts made us think wrong. Our general atti- 
tude toward work varies somewhat in accordance with 
race, place, and time, but is traceable, easily enough, 
to certain general root ideas. 

One line of racial feeling on this subject has been 
most fully and ably treated by Veblen in his * Theory 
of the Leisure Class.”” He shows how labour, being 
first performed by women and then by conquered oppo- 
nents made slaves, was despised by the early mind, and 
how, further, the ability not to work, involving power 
to make others work for you, soon became an ingrained 
principle of pride; further, how the leisure class, an 
aborted part of the body politic, has preserved these 
errors of the early mind and added heavily to them by 
the increment of tradition and long association. This 
accounts satisfactorily enough for a large share of the 
popular feeling about work. 

179 


180 HUMAN WORK 

It is perhaps as part of this feeling that the ancient 
Hebrew religion, postulated by a people of pastoral 
ideals and Oriental temperament, takes the extreme 
ground that work is a curse, a punishment, visited upon 
man for his sins; and that Eden behind us or Heaven 
before us has its main attraction in ceaseless idleness. 

This mischievous error, incorporated in so important 
a religion, and forced upon the human mind for so 
many centuries, has done incalculable harm. In vain 
have later and wiser religionists protested that “ labour 
is prayer,” a divine curse is not to be whiffled away by 
any such pretty phrase as that. It is not enough to 
receive a new truth, you must discharge the old lie, if 
your mind is to work straight. 
- Our attitude toward Work rests also, however, upon 
other errors than these, the most fundamental of which 
are the Ego concept and the Pay concept. Under the 
first we relate our ideas and sentiments about work to 
the individual, in which position no understanding is 
possible; we might as well try to understand mastica- 
tion in relation to a tooth. Under the second, we think 
only of the “ reward of labour ”; and have carried this 
absurdity to its logical height in classing the indus- 
tries of the world under the phrase of “ getting a liv- 
ing,” as if the maintenance of the worker were the 
object of the work. This again is as absurd as if we 
believed that chewing was done in order to maintain 
teeth. 

When we accept the organic nature of society, the 
whole proposition changes, we then see all varieties of 


CHAPTER NINE Lin a 
work to be social functions, performed in the interests 
of the whole; and that the maintenance of the indi- 
vidual normally depends, not on a reward for the value 
or amount of the work he does, but on the general 
health of the social body and his having proper access 
to its currents of nutrition. Yet even this perception 
will not wholly free us while we are still muddled by 
the pay theory, still holding that a man or a so- 
ciety only works in order to get something, and that, 
in justice, there must be a return for the effort ex- 
pended. 

This common assumption is accepted as basic by our 
political economists, and their further theories, sys- 
tems, and alleged laws all rest on it. It is called the 
Want Theory. Fully and fairly stated the common 
definition of work, based on the want theory, is this: 
Work is an expenditure of energy by the individual in 
order to obtain the means to gratify a desire. This is 
almost universally believed. We accept it so fully that 
one of the steps taken by missionaries to arouse in- 
dustrial energy in savages is to make them want things. 
As further manifestation of our belief in it we hold 
that if people were supplied with anything they did not 
work for, did not previously expend energy to get, they 
would, of course, cease to work. On this ground, 
honestly and logically held, every step toward free 
public provision for popular need has been opposed. 

Before going further in discussion of our common 
errors, Jet us lay down the main thesis of this book, ad- 
vanced as the true theory of work. 


182 HUMAN WORK 


It is this: Work is an expenditure of energy by 
Society in the fulfilment of its organic functions. It is 
performed by highly specialised individuals under press 
of social energy, and is to them an end in itself, a con- 
dition of their existence and their highest joy and duty. 

The difference between the two positions is best seen in 
studying organic action in lower forms. Consider, for 
instance, the action of the heart in our bodies. Here is 
a small muscular machine, which keeps up a violent and 
continuous activity for some seventy years. Why? 
and How? Why should this organ work so hard and so 
incessantly? My stomach gets some rest—my legs get 
more—but this member is always at work. What want 
does he gratify by it? Is he any better paid than leg 
or stomach? 

If the heart were an individual, and were pulsating 
for pay, he might conceivably stop when he got what 
he wanted. ‘‘ Why continue to beat?” he might nat- 
urally ask. ‘ I have what I was beating for!” And if, 
further, you supplied this independent creature with all 
it wanted, free, it would quite naturally cease beating 
altogether. 

But as an Organ, which is quite a different thing 
from an Individual, the heart does not act on any such 
basis. It has been slowly developed through long ages 
of physical evolution, to perform a function of no use 
to itself, but of primal use to the body to which it be- 
longs, the body which made it, the body without which 
there would be no such thing as a heart. This func- 
tion being so absolutely essential, the heart is fitted to 


CHAPTER NINE 183 


beat steadily on from birth to death; when it ceases 
beating the body goes out of business altogether. 

Now a separate animal the size of a heart could not 
keep up any such long-continued regular exercise, it 
could not furnish sufficient energy; but the large body 
which needs a heart can run one, it has a supply of 
energy on which all its organs draw. The work of a 
living organ is not at cost of its own energy, but of 
the energy of the entire organism. Society, as an or- 
ganism, has a vast, a practically unlimited supply of 
energy, and the human being, as a member of that 
society, is supplied with it. 

The discharge of this energy is so far from costing 
the individual anything that, on the contrary, any pre- 
vention of his normal work causes him acute suffering. 
And as in the physical body, each special organ, in 
order that it may devote its entire life to the physical 
service, is by the circulation of nutrition saved any ne- 
cessity for caring for itself ; so in the social body, each 
man, in order that he may devote his entire life to the 
social service, is similarly provided for by the distri- 
bution of economic products; our social nutrition. 

Here we are at once met by existing beliefs, loud- 
voiced. ‘* Men are not ‘ organs,’ they are conscious in- 
dividuals. Men are not—oh! palpably not—provided 
for by any such beneficial process of social distribution 
of nourishment; each man must take care of himself or 
starve!” 

The individual consciousness of men is not denied, 
it is that, misconstrued, which has made these common 


184 HUMAN WORK 


social functions work so ill, and hurt so in the working. 
To that same individual consciousness this book is di- 
rected, urging reconsideration of the facts, readjust- 
ment of the industrial activities. But however con- 


‘“‘ organs,” their labours 


scious, men are none the less 
serve our common ends; not their own. It is not that 
each man has some exact analogue in physiological 
type, like the heart, but that each industry holds or- 
ganic relations with all other industries, and that the 
use and purpose of each depend on the others. The 
need to be supplied is a social need, the growth to be 
attained is a social growth, of no more value to an 
individual, detached, than beating would be to a heart, 
detached. Work is an organic function, incontro- 
vertibly. 7 

As to the lack of social provision of nourishment, this 
again is but an error. The provision is there, the 
whole of society contributing to it; the circulation is 
there, our food and other goods flowing merrily across 
land and sea; but there is some trouble with the final 
distribution of this nourishment to the workers, which 
will be considered later. Admitting the imperfections, 
it remains true that the social circulation is now in 
action—the shoemaker of Massachusetts eating the 
beef of Nebraska, and the beef-raiser of Nebraska 
wearing the shoes of Massachusetts. 

No man could work, which is a social function, if he 
had at the same time to “ take care of himself,” which 
is an individual function. As a worker in society. he is 
taken care of, but he does not do it himself. To repeat 


CHAPTER NINE 185 


our definition—normal human work is a discharge 
of social energy along lines of special development. 
The social organism lives in the fulfilment of its or- 
ganic functions, that fulfilment is work; to work is to 
take part in the vital processes of Society, to be so- 
cially alive; not to work, not to take part in these vital 
processes, is to be one of three things: First, mere dead 
matter, Waste; second, a Parasite, active as a thief, 
passive as a pauper; or third, a Disease, of which in 
time Society must die. 

With the waste products of society we are painfully 
familiar, the great army of defectives, people who 
cannot work, yet whom, as part of ourself, we must 
support, a drag upon the Social resources. The active 
parasite we know in his crude form, as the little thief, 
and are beginning to detect in his highly developed form 
as the big thief. ‘The passive parasite we know also in 
his crude form as the idle poor, and are beginning to 
suspect in the idle rich. But the disease is still be- 
yond our diagnosis, though many Societies have died 
of it, those morbid processes engendered by the presence 
in the social body of any matter not alive and healthily 
active. 

These features of the abnormal working of Society 
come later. Let us now study the evolution of Work. 

The Universe as we know it is occupied in transmit- 
ting energy. ‘The amount seems inexhaustible and in- 
destructible. It rolls on interminably, discharging 
warmth and light into blank spaces; and, whenever 
worlds have formed, getting tangled up in a thousand 


186 HUMAN WORK 


shapes and sputtering mightly as it finds its compli- 
cated way out through them. 

A living creature has an elaborate system of receiv- 
ing and discharging energy, more elaborate as the life- 
form grows higher. 

Force in inorganic matter has a simple channel, vary- 
ing the monotony by occasional explosions. Force in 
the vegetable world is freer and learns new tricks— 
building tall trees and flaming out in blossoms. Force 
in the animal kingdom has wider range; these life- 
forms can do more things. ‘They have more ways to 
express energy, and more ways to receive it. With 
special senses tuned to catch various vibrations, they 
respond to light, heat, and sound, to touch, taste, and 
smell; their impressions are varied and their expres- 
sions equally so. 

Here enters Consciousness, with its extremes of 
Pleasure and Pain; the director of action, but not its 
cause. This complex engine, receiving so many im- 
pressions, transmitting so many expressions, must feel, 
because it acts; must act, because it feels. An Action 
is a consciously directed expression of energy. A Sen- 
sation is a consciously recorded impression of energy. 
Both sensation and action, if normal, are pleasurable— 
the conscious transmission of energy is joy. 

The pleasure in sensation increases in proportion to 
the extent and delicacy of the sensorium. The pleasure 
in action increases in proportion to the extent and deli- 
cacy of the executive mechanism. Pain, of course, is 
proportionate to pleasure at any stage; meaning only 


CHAPTER NINE 187 


abnormal use of the same nerves, but the higher the de- 
velopment of the organism the greater its ability to 
avoid pain. | 

The course of evolution has been to develop more and 
more complicated instruments for the transmission of 
energy. Society, as the highest life-form, is the most 
exquisitely complex of all; it has a sensorium far 
larger, and more subtly sensitive, and an executive ap- 
paratus commensurate; it has a degree of consciousness 
highest of all, and a proportional capacity for joy and 
ability to avoid pain. 

This social transmission of energy is Work. ‘The 
forces of the universe flowing through humanity come 
in by all our highly cultivated powers of perception, 
and come out in our beautiful profusion of creative ac- 
tivities—in work. The conscious transmission of 
energy reaches in us a transcendent height of pleasure 
by virtue of our co-ordinate action. There is larger joy 
in “team work” than in the individual play. The 
pleasure of dancing in companies, or the rhythmic mo- 
tions of a drill, is not confined to those particular activi- 
ties ; but, in normal conditions, inheres in all smoothly 
co-operate exercise. The reasons why we do not feel 
it in those exercises we call work are not inherent, but 
purely associative; or else due to accompanying condi- 
tions of a painful nature. 

Normal conditions of human work require, first, that 
the worker shall be well nourished physically and so- 
cially, well educated to his fullest height of ability, and 
well placed in the work he likes best and does best— 


188 HUMAN WORK 


(these two being identical). A worker, so placed, is in 
no way overtaxing his own energy, but is merely giving 
expression to the social energy, and finds in that 
process an exhaustless joy. We are so used to con- 
sider work as a drain upon the strength of the: indi- 
vidual—and indeed in our artificial conditions it so 
often is—that we may not at first appreciate the nature 
of this fund of social energy. 

Let us observe its development, comparing the power 
at the disposal of a member of society with that of an 
individual animal. An individual animal is a mecha- 
nism adapted to the performance of certain activities, 
urged thereto by certain stimuli, and governed therein 
by certain instincts, and, perhaps, concepts. The 
activities of the animal are limited, of course, by his 
executive machinery; he has only the tools that grow 
on him. 

These are ingenious and reasonably effective, but 
their development is slow, requiring many generations 
of heartless ‘ elimination of the unfit” to gradually 
evolve the fit. If his claws are not good enough, he 
dies, those having somewhat better claws survive; slowly 
the claws improve. He cannot in one lifetime invent 
and manufacture better claws, but has to be tediously 
and expensively “ selected,” the whole beast sacrificed 
to the defective claw. 

Further, his excellence is checked by the interaction 
of parts,—all his tools being part of him, and modi- 
fying each other. The more things he can do, the less 
perfectly he does them; the more perfectly he does a 


CHAPTER NINE 189 


thing, the fewer things he can do. The beaver, for 
instance, is a highly developed builder, but he cannot 
run well, or climb trees. Where you find the most per- 
fect specialisation of an animal’s machinery to a par- 
ticular function, you find the creature practically help- 
less otherwise—as the ant-eater. So we find the execu- 
tive capacity of an individual animal limited, first, by 
his body and its slow methods of adaptation. 

His stimuli are also limited. This small machine is 
kept going by its own supply of nervous energy, re- 
plenished by food, sleep, air, and water. It will run — 
so long, and then must rest and be “ fired up.” Special 
excitants of fear, pain, or unusual hunger may tem- 
porarily accelerate his activity, but he has then to rest 
the longer. His executive capacity is thus limited, 
second, by his small nervous energy and narrow range 
of stimulus. 

It is further confined, thirdly, by the narrow circle 
of his instincts, desires, or ideas, if he has them. 'The 
governing impulse is simple race-preservation, mingled 
with the self-preserving instincts; egoism and familism 
cover his range of interests. Hope, fear, desire,—all 
are for self or family. 

So we find in the individual animal, his efficiency is 
limited by (a) his personal mechanism, (b) his personal 
nerve force, and (c) his personal interests. For such an 
agent work—continuous expression of energy—would 
indeed be difficult. But now examine the position of 
the human being. 

Man’s tools do not grow on him. He has been able 


190 HUMAN WORK 


to evolve improved tools without sacrificing a thousand 
slow generations to breed them. He adds to his executive 
ability, (a) the power of numbers, and of the “ relay 
race” (wild dogs have this), (b) the power of division 
of labour, (ants and bees have this), (¢) the tool, de- 
tachable and exchangeable. 

In this comes at once an enormous saving of energy. 
Where the mole has to spend not only his immediate 
strength in digging, but his whole racial tendency in 
being modified to digging, the man with a spade can do 
far more work in proportion to his strength, and still 
be able to do other things. The executive efficiency of 
the man is multiplied, first, by association, again by 
division of labour, and again by the tool. The tool 
being not a personal adjunct like the claw, but a sepa- 
rate thing, usable by many, the efficiency is again in- 
creased by the exchange of tools. It is multiplied, 
fourth, by the development of the tool into the ma- 
chine, and fifth, by the application to the machine of 
extra-personal power, of the forces of nature direct. 
Thus where one man alone as a separate naked animal 
could accomplish something equal to, say 5: as a mem- 
ber of society his efficiency is squared by associa- 
tion=25; cubed by the division of labour=125; raised 
to the fourth power by the tool=625; to the fifth, by 
the machine=3125; and to the sixth, by the use of 
natural forces=15,625. 

In view of even this much of our human efficiency, 
the exertion requisite for a human creature to do his 
share of our human work is so slight in proportion to 


CHAPTER NINE 191 


our wealth of power that it is exquisitely absurd for 
us to speak of it as an expense of energy. Where an 
individual animal has to pour out his full stock of 
strength in hunting his prey, or, if graminivorous, in 
wandering over great areas after grass; man, collect- 
ive, can produce and distribute food for a thousand 
by the specialised services of ten men with machinery. 
The executive efficiency of humanity is raised to such 
an enormous height that the spectacle of human beings 
still spending their personal energy at long hours of 
exhausting labour is an incredible paradox. 

As far as power goes, one human being should be 
easily able to “ pay for his keep” for life in a year’s 
work or less. But we are by no means done with the 
increase of efficiency. This five-times multiplied en- 
ginery of ours would still be comparatively futile, if 
the governing agent, man, had only the stimuli of the 
beast. The separate animal has his own supply of 
cerebral energy. It is something. It enables him to 
co-ordinate his forces; such as they are, and to under- 
take extreme exertion when he has to, such as it is. 
He maintains this energy by breathing, eating, and 
sleeping. Men can do these things too. Men, as sep- 
arate animals, have each his own supply of cerebral 
energy. But Man has more. 

Social energy is quite a different thing from indi- 
vidual energy. By as much as the dynamic force of an 
elephant is greater than that of the elephant’s bulk in 
monads, so is the dynamic force of a society greater 
than that of the mere sum of its individual con- 


192 HUMAN WORK 


stituents,—and more. Social energy has been ac- 
cumulating in humanity from its birth. It is not 
only that co-ordinate action allows the transmission 
of wider waves of force than individual action, but 
that society in its organic function continually stores 
force in material products, and so establishes an ever 
enlarging magazine of power. This is where the social 
body so aids and furthers the action of the social soul. 
Each material object, so that it be a normal product, 
embodies and continually transmits the force that 
made it. 

We are supplied, by virtue of our social relation, with 
a large complex brain ‘area; the organ of social life. 
That great life we partake of in using the social body, 
in the immediately effective tools, utensils, and ma- 
chines, and necessary material conveniences of life; 
but even more as we have access to the great social 
battery, the work of art. A human brain has not only 
the existent sum of social energy to draw on, but the 
stored energy of all the past. 

The Artist, highly specialised receiver and trans- 
mitter, gathers immense waves of force, concentrates 
and embodies them, and those around and coming after 
have permanent access to the power that moved him. 
This is perhaps clearest in the art of literature; where 
the thought and feeling of all time stand bottled on 
our shelves, always feeding, never exhausted. In music 
and painting and sculpture—in all arts—we have forms 
of the same beautiful social process. | 

Thus the human brain receives as stimulus such focte 


CHAPTER NINE 193 


of force, such soundless seas of force, that it is practi- 
cally unlimited. The measure of social stimulus has yet 
to be found. It passed the using point long ago, and 
has never stopped growing. The human brain, rightly 
supplied with social stimulus, is so fed, so fired, so 
thrilled and filled with energy, that it suffers agony if 
denied free discharge. That free discharge is social 
service, the splendid variety and complexity of achieve- 
ment in which all may find full exercise of this tremen- 
dous power, and in that exercise find pride, peace, and 
joy, express love, satisfy ambition, realise human life. 

Thus with our endless multiplication of executive 
efficiency comes a similarly endless multiplication of 
stimulus—yet still we hear this prehistoric claim that a 
man will not exert himself—unless he has to! The point 
is, that he does have to—by virtue of being human; 
that it is not so much “ exertion ” as it is relief. To dis- 
charge an overpressure of energy is not ‘ exertion ” 
exactly. 

Further yet: the beast, behind his little foot-power 
engine, with the force furnished by gobbled rabbit or 
patch of grass, had no governing scheme of life where- 
with to direct his small activities, save the basic animal 
instincts of self-preservation and reproduction—egoism 
and familism. Man,—Citizen, Patriot, Hero,—man has 
for governing plan of action, the distinctive instincts 
of humanity,—the social. The animal will do much 
for its own life, the mother will do much for her own 
young ; but man will do more for his City, his State, his 
Country, and his World. 


194 HUMAN WORK 


This is not a sentimental claim for what he might do, 
but a plain historic reference to what he has done. 
Athenian, Roman, Carthaginian, Frenchman, German, 
or Englishman—latest of all, American. True, our 
recognition of social duty has been narrow; consisting 
principally in “ dying for one’s country ”; but that we 
have done with splendid heights of heroism, and no 
beast can do so much. 

The bee and ant? Yes, of course, they too are 
social animals, of very high intelligence. And they, 
be it noted, have not this shameful fallacy that no 
one will exert himself “ unless he has to,” unless he 
“wants” something. With much of the same col- 
lectivism, though sharply limited as we have seen by 
the predominant femininity, with much of the same 
specialisation, with a better developed sense of common 
interest than we have, the ant and bee are types of con- 
tented and ceaseless industry. Yet they have to do it 
all “‘ by hand,” they have no extra-personal tools and 
machinery, they have no horse-power, wind- or water- 
power, steam power, or electric power. They have no 
great reservoir of energy in Literature and Art. And 
they have no wider scheme of life than a sublimated 
ultra-organised motherhood—everything else is subsid- 
iary to that function. 

If humanity were perfectly healthy; if our mechani- 
cal efficiency were rightly placed and fully used; if our 
social energy were accessible to all, and our social in- 
stincts freely developed, we should see each young 
human being coming eagerly forward to do his share of 


CHAPTER NINE 195 


the world’s work, not under the action of personal de- 
sire—or fear of penalty—but simply to relieve the 
pressure! So irresistible is our growth in this direc- 
tion that even under all our artificial hindrances, 
against the combined resistance of religion, tradition, 
superstition, habit, custom, education, and condition, 
still the normal child does want to work, tries to work, 
and in some cases bursts through the whole cordon of 
opposition and does the work he is made for, though it 
cost him his life. 

We see this conspicuously in the latest and most 
highly specialised forms of work, as the arts, sciences, 
and most developed professions. Naturally the more 
delicately special an organ is the more imperative is its 
doing its own kind of work, and no other. So we have 
seen again and again the people we call “ great,” they 
having more social energy at command than others, 
pushing forward over all obstacles to do their particu- 
lar kind of work, not only without regard to the pay, 
which they did not get, but without regard to the pun- 
ishment, which they did get. We have tried to ac- 
count for this by assuming that the “ desire”? which 
actuated them was a desire for fame. We are so sure 
that it must be a desire of some sort! Why is it so 
difficult to admit the presence of radiating energy in a 
live creature? We can see it plainly enough in “ mere 
matter.” 

Radium does not necessarily want something be- 
cause it so continually does something. 

To feel a lack—to see a desired supply—to exert 


196 HUMAN WORK 


one’s energy to obtain the supply and so cease to lack, 
is a natural process of action, but not the only one. 
Organic action differs here from individual action. 

The Teacher is an exquisitely developed social func- 
tionary, wholly a transmitter, using various arts 
and sciences to help him, but his own art involving the 
subtlest psychological skill. When this temperament 
is charged with most radical truths, when the teaching 
is a religion,—then we have the great souls who have 
appeared again and again in history, so charged with 
social energy that nothing, not difficulty, danger, death 
itself, could stop them. They would teach and they 
did teach, to the immense benefit of the society whose_ 
unconscious laws evolved them, whose conscious laws 
destroyed them. The scientific discoverer has too fre- 
quently shared the same fate; the inventor, the pioneer 
in any change, has a hard time. ‘‘ The Push” in So- 
ciety is a place of honour, but not an easy one. 

Even in the more ordinary kinds of work we oc- 
casionally see the strong, clear urgency of a spe- 
cialised worker toward his special work, and his pleas- 
ure in it; an urgency and a pleasure not related to - 
honour or payment, but to the work itself. The reason 
we see less of the natural impulse to work in the main 
fields of labour is partly because we have piled our 
ignorant contempt most particularly on the kind of 
work we most needed, and partly because we have added 
to our contempt the heaviest practical difficulties by 
careful cutting off the general worker from his full 
share of social nutrition. The rank and file of hu- 


CHAPTER NINE 197 


manity, as a result of our misconceptions about work, 
are so drained of nervous energy from generation to 
generation by being overtaxed in labour, and so de- 
frauded of social nourishment by our system of “ pay- 
ment ” based on those misconceptions, that it is mar- 
vellous indeed to see the work they do under these con- 
ditions, and not marvellous at all to see their steady 
tendency toward pauperism, criminalism, and all disease. 

Of London it is stated that when the labourer from 
the country comes into the city to work, the second 
generation of his line is inferior in health, strength, 
and ability, the third generation much crippled and 
diseased, and there is no fourth. 

Under social conditions like these it is not to be ex- 
pected that we shall find much evidence of man’s natural 
desire to work, either general or special. As well look 
for willing industry in a hospital. On the contrary, it 
is to be expected that this body of people shall be unwill- 
ing and largely unable to work, that they shall seek 
continually to avoid work and as continually seek to 
enlarge their supply of social nourishment so cruelly 
cut off. It will take several generations of right living 
to reimburse this part of our social stock and bring 
them up to the level of social energy required to enjoy 
work. But when the swift recuperative forces of 
physiology have rebuilt the individual animal, and the 
far swifter forces of Sociology have refilled them with 
their share of our vast resources of strength and in- 
spiration, and their share of the social interest, pride, 
and love which mark the fully human creature, then 


198 HUMAN WORK 


we shall find our assumption, “no man will exert him- 
self unless to gratify desire,” to lack even its present 
justification. 

There is no pain, no waste, no loss to normal work; it 
is a free discharge of abundant social energy, either un- 
conscious or accompanied by sensations of keenest 
pleasure. 

Let us consider this Want theory a little further. 

A solitary animal cannot get his dinner without 
exerting himself. If he could, he would not exert him- 
self. This we observe, and then, considering man as 
an animal like the others, we assume similarly: A man 
cannot get his dinner without exerting himself; if he 
could, he would not exert himself. Why we are so 
anxious to see to it that every man shall exert himself, 
a thing which evidently cannot concern the public if 
he is merely getting his own dinner, is a bit puzzling. 
But on perceiving that unless he exerts himself we do 
not get owr dinner, our interest is excused. 

Let us restate the proposition. Mankind cannot get 
its dinner without exerting itself. If it could, it would 
not exert itself. 

Granted at once. If agriculture, manufacture, and 
commerce were not essential to social life, they would 
not have been evolved. But there is an immediate 
difference introduced in the “ exertion” involved and 
its causes. Our social nutritive processes being com- 
plex and collective, require the elaborate activities of 
many individuals in lines which bear no relation what- 
ever to their own dinners. 


CHAPTER NINE 199 


Social evolution, wiser and more practical than we, 
has met the necessities of the case by developing those 
organic tendencies in man which urge him to his social 
activities, and that always-increasing fund of social 
nutrition and social energy which enables him to do his 
work. The difference between an architect dreaming 
great buildings and eager to build them and an animal 
struggling for his food, is as the difference between the 
action of the heart and the action of a hungry fox. 
The fox exerts himself to supply his wants, the heart 
exerts itself as a functional activity it cannot help and 
without any reference to its wants. 

Its wants are supplied, to be sure, but not in meas- 
ured dole related to its activities. The exertions of 
the heart bear relation to the need of the organism to 
which it belongs, not to its own appetite. If you have 
to run, your heart works harder; i¢ had no need of 
extra work, but you had, and, being an organ, it per- 
formed the work. 

Man’s work is called for by the social demands. 
Society needs Commerce, and Commerce is developed. 
Society needs Art, and Art is developed. But man, 
being a self-conscious individual, had to be convinced 
from without as well as urged from within, else he 
stoutly refused to perform his social service. ‘* Why 
should I,” he asks, * if it does not benefit me? A man 
works only to get something.” Before he had got 
even this far in formulating his objection to work, he 
was forced to it, as we have seen, by the slave system 
and effectually coerced. To meet this later attitude 


200 HUMAN WORK 


of refusal he was forced to it by the wage system, and 
effectually coerced as before. In the first case the 
anti-social results of that form of labour have led to 
its being discarded, and in the second case we are 
rapidly approaching the same conclusion. Social 
service performed under the persuasion of self-interest 
is accompanied by so many deleterious and anti-social 
phenomena that it is high time we adopted a wiser 
system. 

When exertion is recognised as a racial necessity and 
a high individual pleasure, there is no longer any 
weight to the first clause of the Want theory. When 
it is shown that our desires are gratified by the exertion 
of others exclusively, there is no longer any weight 
to the second. And when it is shown that the required 
** exertion ” is not an exertion at all, but a relief, a 
mere letting off of the social steam pressure, the Want 
theory begins to need a historian to explain it. The 
only really confusing element lies in the system of 
exchange now in use, the wage system, and will be taken 
up in the chapter on Distribution. 


Peete NACE URE OF WORK (11) 
Summary 


Life a verb. Vegetable life processes, animal and 
social. Work is human life. A sick society. Trans- 
mission of energy, pleasure in collective sensation. 
Pleasure in specific function. Pain of malposition and 
malnutrition. Recapitulation. Work is making, not 
taking. Squaw and hunter. Maternal energy. Bee. 
The motherised male. Short circuit of idividual 
action. Production of food. Common defence. The 
social base and ensuing variation. Attendant evils, 
Personal consequences and social. Social treason. 
Sim of common carriers. Contrast between effect of 
industry and war. Agriculture and peace. Commerce 
and honesty and justice. Work is altruistic. Steps of 
development. Female origin of Work. True Human 
Work has no sex connotation. Male belligerence in in- 
dustry. The world and the home. Thief and pauper. 
Production collective. The Social traitor. Work is giv- 
mg out, not taking in. Slavery an essential transition 
system, also wagery. Master, Employer, Co-operator. 
Shame of work based on slavery and self-interest. So- 
cial productivity has allowed disease. American atti- 
tude toward work. Conservation of energy. Work 
must not waste force, organic action does not. Accu- 
mulated energy must be discharged. Social energy 
enormous. Normal work an easy discharge. Ab- 
normal work injurious. Social evolution in ease and 
happiness. Effect of false concepts. Child’s delight 
m work. Organic action agreeable or unconscious. 
Conditions of normal work. 


xX 
THE NATURE OF WORK (IT) 


Lire is a verb, not a noun. Life is living, living is 
doing, life is that which is done by the organism. 

The living of a tree consists in the action of the 
roots in obtaining food; of the leaves in obtaining air; 
of the sap in circulating, distributing these goods; and 
in the processes of reproduction. The life of an 
animal is more complex. He has a somewhat similar 
internal mechanism; he breathes, circulates, and repro- 
duces; but with him the fumbling root-tip has become 
a paw, a mouth, a whole group of related members 
wherewith to meet his needs; he has more to do to find 
his food than just to poke in the dark. Living, for 
an animal, involves many interesting activities, and 
those activities are his life. 

The life of, Society is higher and wider yet. Here 
are the separate animal constituents whose life proc- 
esses must be kept going, and here are the wholly new 
social life processes to be carried on. Human life 
involves the performance of the complex social life 
processes. The plant has poking, absorbing, circu- 
lating, breathing, and reproducing to do. That is 
plant life. The animal similarly circulates, breathes, and 
reproduces, but he “ pokes ” in a much more elaborate 
manner, developing also new methods of offence and 

203 


204 HUMAN WORK 

defence in maintaining these essential functions. That 
is animal life. Man, as an animal, breathes, circulates, 
and reproduces in humble pursuance of previous 
methods, but as a social being not only has his nu- 
tritive process become of enormous organic complexity, 
but there have appeared also vast and subtle develop- 
ments of special functions hitherto unknown: industry, 
trade, commerce, art, science, education, government, 
—all that we call Work. 

In this development is human life. I do not mean 
that it is essential to human life, it is human life. If 
the gathering and circulating of nutrition, the absorp- 
tion of air, the blossoming and fruition of a tree are 
‘essential to the tree’s life,” pray, what remains as 
“the life” of the tree to which they are essential? 
You may truly say that breathing, circulating, and 


* essential ” to an animal’s life; that 


reproducing are 
life, as distinct from other lives, being the more spe- 
cial activities he has developed. So with the human 
creature. It is essential to his animal life that he 
breathe, circulate, and reproduce; it is essential to his 
human life also that he perform enough varied physical 
activity to keep him in good form; but it és his human 
life to be “ doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief,” or what- 
ever is his department in the social economy. 

Work is human life. 

Thus, as health, happiness, and beauty are found 
in lower forms in perfect performance of their simpler 
life processes, so in Society we find health, happiness, 
and beauty in proportion to our performance of these 


CHAPTER TEN 205 


our life processes; a greater, far greater health, happi- 
ness, and beauty in the magnificent spread and range 
_ of these processes ; a far more terrible record of disease, 
misery, and horrid ugliness as we fail of fulfilment. 

A defective, sick, or dead plant is an unpleasant sight. 
A defective, sick, or dead animal is a more unpleasant 
sight. But the depth and ramifications of misery and 
horror in a defective, sick, or dead society,—this is what 
has made us call this fair world “a vale of tears.” 

Such a pity, too! When it could be just as healthy 
as a plant or animal! It is far more fun to be an 
animal than a plant, more exertion and so more pleas- 
ure. And it is far more fun to be a human being than 
a mere individual animal, far more complicated exer- 
tion and so more pleasure. With our vastly increased 
capacity for happiness our misery must be accounted 
for by “ failure to connect ” with the universal energy 
in one or both ways. We are denied our share of 
stimulus, we lack social nourishment, or, worse, we are 
denied our right discharge, are not rightly placed in the 
field of social action, are not doing the work which be- 
longs to us. 

It should be noted here that the happiness of social 
action as beyond that of individual action increases in 
_ proportion to its collectivity. There is a larger joy 
in perfect ‘ team-work ” than in the best individual 
play. Connected as we are, the sensation that thrills 
through the whole audience is stronger far than what 
is felt by one man alone, like King Ludwig of Bavaria 
in the empty auditorium. 


206 HUMAN WORK 


If a man is rightly placed in the world’s work, doing 
what he is best fitted for to the height of his best 
powers, and if he clearly sees that by so doing he fills 
his place in the universal economy perfectly, then, 
granting of course that he is properly nourished phys- 
ically and socially, he is happy. But if he is ill-nour- 
ished he is unhappy, not power enough flowing in; if 
he is ill-placed in social service he is unhappy, lacking 
right lines of discharge, his energy banking up and 
pushing against right doors that don’t open, and 
moving very slack through wrong doors that do. 
Moreover, though well-nourished and well-placed, if he 
is hag-ridden by some ancient lie about work being a 
curse, a disgrace, or some such idiocy, then he is un- 
happy because his own mind, clogged and twisted, turns 
on cross-currents of pressure that spoil the smooth 
flow of energy. 

To recapitulate: 

Life is action. 

Action is conscious discharge of energy. 

Discharge of energy is pleasure in proportion to 
amount, complexity, and freedom of delivery. 

Social action involves greatest amount and com- 
plexity, and so, with free delivery, greatest pleasure. 
Our free delivery is checked by wrong conditions and 
wrong concepts. 

By altering the concepts we can alter conditions and 
so make social action normal. 

Work is social action. 

It is the expression of social energy for social use. 


CHAPTER TEN 207 


It is essentially collective, and we find work most 
highly developed among most collective creatures, as 
the ant, the bee, the man. 

It involves a higher degree of intelligence than the 
preceding processes. All the efforts of animals to take 
food are excito-motory, and either egoistic or, at most, 
familistic. They are hungry, they desire something, 
and they go to get it, performing whatever actions 
have become necessary in the pursuit. But work is the 
process of making, not of taking. It is not excito- 
motory, but the result of cerebral action. 

The humble squaw who drops corn in her stick- 
ploughed field is actuated by a concept, a knowledge 
of how in time there will be fruit for her children. 
There is no present stimulus, she pushes herself, urged 
by the accumulating nerve force of the larger brain. 
Her lord, the noble Red-man, gallantly pursuing the 
buffalo, is acting merely as an animal, under direct stim- 
ulus of hunger and the visible beast before him. Being 
hungry, he hunts. Being fed, he does nothing. He can 
only act in the lower circuit of excito-motory nerves. 
But she, not hungry, makes the corn grow. She makes 
the tent. She makes the moccasins and leggings and 
beaded belt. She makes the dish and basket. She, first 
on earth, works, and she works for others. 

First, it was only this mother energy, producing for 
its young; the same power which finds its apotheosis in 
the sublime matriarchate of the bee. Work was pri- 
marily an extension of the maternal function; and, 
carried to excess, results in that ultra-perfection of 


208 HUMAN WORK 


specialised maternity, the ever-bearing queen-mother, 
the ever-toiling worker-mother, and the contemptible, 
well-nigh useless, barely tolerated, and soon slaughtered 
drone-father. But human work was saved this hope- 
less limitation of maternity by being forced upon the 
male, and by him specialised and distributed. To work 
and save is feminine, tending to the swollen hive, the 
sacrificed male. We still see this tendency among us in 
that long-aborted social rudiment, the home. But man, 
assuming the industrial function, applied to it his dis- 
seminating energy, spread, scattered, specialised, and 
so made possible our social life. If the bees had been led 
to our great economic maneuvre, the motherising of the 
male, they might be more than hymenoptera to-day. 

Work, as an ever-elaborating discharge of energy, 
tends to develop under laws of inertia, like all natural 
processes. The “tendency to vary” in action is 
checked in the short circuit of individual animal activ- 
ities by the immediate consequence of his own variation 
to the individual. This wonderful new step of ours, the 
production of food, gave us a new base for variation. 
A low grade of effort, by a few persons, kept us fed, 
alive. Our early specialisation in social defence kept 
us protected, alive. Being thus assured of life, though 
not on the basis of individual exertion, we acquired 
time to manifest new activities. 

Here is one of the great keys to “ the mystery of 


> no more a mystery than any of nature’s 


human life,’ 
laws, when you know it. A social life is assured by 


the basic industry, agriculture, and some degree of 


CHAPTER TEN 209 


trade and commerce. ‘Then the energy no longer re- 
quired by each man for each day’s living can be given 
to invention, discovery, experiment. So follows all the 
immensity of our growth. 

The social base being absolutely firm, and requiring 
less and less social energy as our agricultural and 
commercial processes improve, we grow in arithmetical * 
progression—or in geometrical rather—as our in- 
crease in production and distribution multiplies our 
ability and our increase in ability multiples our 
production and distribution. ‘This assured base and 
wide room for variation is necessary to society in de- 
veloping its higher functions. We can afford to feed 
and guard for several generations the slow-maturing 
genius, which, when it reaches the productive point, will 
richly benefit us all. We'can give more rest and free- 
dom to our members than any self-fed and self-guarded 
beast could dream of. 

A thousand delicate and beautiful specialties are al- 
lowed to grow by our broad sure social base of sup- 
plies. So far we have seen this in conscious action 
only where a government has encouraged certain arts 
or sciences, or where an established church or endowed 
university has bred its kind of specialty, or again 
where some individual has contrived to enlarge his own 
“social base” enormously, and “ varies” as he will, 
but we see its converse commonly enough where the in- 
dividual is not allowed any hold on the social base, but 
kept at the self-feeding stage in development, thus ef- 
feetually checking his “ tendency to vary.” 


210 HUMAN WORK 


Every advantage has its possible attendant evils, and 
Society offers a wide field for such. Im the point we 
are treating, the evils are painfully prominent. As 
soon as we left the self-supplying stage, a man’s sins 
were no longer visited immediately on his own head. 
An animal gains or loses by his own behaviour. A man 
gains or loses by his society’s behaviour. In his as- 
sured position as a member of society a man can be 
wickeder and more foolish than is possible in any self- 
supported life, and he has taken advantage of his 
opportunities with great facility and zeal. 

The peculiar treason involved in a social being’s 
offences we have not yet grown to recognise. It is 
as if your own teeth turned and gnawed you. Only 
a beneficent society could allow the growth of these 
powerful beings, and with that social power they sin 
against society. 

As conspicuous an instance as can be given of this 
kind of sin is in the action of our misguided common 
carriers. Here is a function so glaringly social that 
one marvels at the power of the human brain in forcibly 
regarding it as a private business. On public land 
granted by the public, with rights and franchises 
granted by the public, with money subscribed by the 
public, and with elaborately co-ordinated labour per- 
formed by the public, this form of public service is 
established. Then one man, or group of men, is 
allowed to “‘ own” this great piece of social machinery, 
and proceeds to administer it, not with regard to the 
public advantage, but with regard to the advantage 


CHAPTER TEN 211 


of this managing group and of that small minority of 
the public who furnished the money for the enterprise. 

Of course this could not be done if the social body 
as a whole recognised the organic character of its own 
processes, but, owing to the prevalence of our ancient 
ego concept and its derivatives, the poor social body 
says, “ Of course; why should the arteries carry blood 
except to feed themselves, it is their business!” 
Against this evil comes the growing altruism of work, 
founded in mother love, in the anti-selfish instinct of 
reproduction; work, which, as it develops, carries with 
it an ever-developing good will. 

Watch this in history. See the two forces as they 
affect society. See the primitive labour of the squaw 
holding the village together, the village which is the 
tiny seed of the state, while against it push the bellig- 
erent rivalries of the male. See the instinct to fight 
and to take, finding larger expression in organised 
warfare, constantly destroying the young societies 
which industry was building up, both in warring with 
one another and in the internal effects of the same 
misplaced instincts. 

Here is productive industry steadily adding to the 
wealth of the world and developing distributive in- 
dustry as inevitably as an overflowing spring makes 
a stream. And here are these destructive tendencies, 
with the primitive desire to get for one’s self, to get 
away from someone else, not only refusing to assist 
in industry, not only dishonourably living on its prod- 
ucts, but so scorning and maltreating the real agents 


212 HUMAN WORK 


of social growth as to repeatedly destroy the societies 
that harboured them. 

In the development of industry have grown the 
altruistic tendencies of mankind. Working together 
bred the social consciousness*as surely as our physical 
organic relation bred our bodily consciousness. Peace, 
good will, mutual helpfulness are part and parcel of 
normal industrial growth. It is somewhat difficult to 
disentangle one current of social phenomena from the 
many crossing ones, some combining and some con- 
flicting, but whenever any one trade can be studied in 
its effect on a group, certain associative psychic qual- 
ities are always found with it, and the general indus- 
trial progress of the world is accompanied by as gen- 
eral progress in social consciousness and the social 
virtues. 

Agriculture brings us at least peace, an. essential 
condition of its continuance. Trade brought the con- 
cept of justice, the market-place and its customs and 
its disputes evoking the early prototypes of our great 
courts of law, and extended peace. Commerce widened 
both still further. 

The evils we commonly attribute to business life be- 
long to the continued survival in it of anti-industrial 
instincts, not to the industrial ones at all. Where an 
individual enters the generous, munificent, kindly field 
of human industry with the equipment of a beast or 
savage, merely to get for himself all that he can, great 
evil results; but the same evil is found unbroken in pre- 
industrial times. 


CHAPTER TEN 213 


Of its own nature work is altruistic. ‘The more gen- 
erally industrial a society is the more we find the higher 
social feelings developed. But the instincts of the 
pre-human beast, the powerful and ingenious self- 
feeder, still find expression, and the more so as society 
becomes more finely organised. Thief catches thief 
very promptly where all are thieves by profession and 
there is little to steal! But a large, sensitive, finely 
organised society offers splendid opportunities to these 
mischievous left-overs of ancient times. 

The first step is mother labour, the next, slave la- 
bour, so up through serfdom to contract, to our present 
system of wage labour. The last step, one we are 
but just learning, most of us, though some entered 
upon it long ago, is man working for mankind; not 
under any primitive coercion, but from the action of 
social forces as natural as breathing. For whom 
should he work? What “ market ” is worth his highly 
specialised ability but this? Can he make bricks or 
compose dramas solely for his own family? 

To associate in the complex discharge of our vast 
energies, and to be amply nourished by their countless 
products, is Social Life. It is true that work is essen- 
tially feminine in its origin, but not permanently. As 
it develops it frees itself wholly from sex limitations 
and becomes a social function in which men and women 
take part as members of society. ‘*‘ Women’s work ” 
in one stage of our life meant every kind of work. 
*Man’s work” is now generally supposed to include 
the harder and rougher, the higher and more difficult. 


214 HUMAN WORK 


There is no real foundation for either term. Either 
sex can do either kind. Work, modern work, has no 
sex-connotation whatever. Moreover, modern science 
has shown that the female, instead of being inferior, is, 
if anything, the more important of the sexes. 

In no way need the association of women with work 
degrade either. A highly entertaining contortion of 
popular thought is seen in our local and temporary 
idea that women ought not to work! We have bred in 
certain classes a sort of parasitic female, most pain- 
fully aborted. It is more agonising and more ridic- 
ulous for a woman not to work than for a man, be- 
cause of her initial sex-tendency and her historic 
habits; but we have bred this pitiful enormity and 
admire it as a Chinaman admires the “ golden lilies ” on 
his wife’s shrunk shanks. But this absurdity is al- 
ready passing. 

One of the effects of sex-distinction, falsely and 
needlessly associated with work, is seen in the general 
fighting attitude of the male towards labour. In 
current literature and current life we continually hear 
man’s economic activities described as a struggle—a 
battle—with some vague opponent called ‘the 
world.” He is described as “ going out” (“ out ” 
meaning elsewhere than at home, the assumption being 
that he would prefer to be “in” all the time!) “to 
battle with the world for his wife and little ones.” 

Katherine, the reformed shrew, makes an eloquent 
description of this prowess of the husband. ‘This is 
held to be a noble effort on his part, and quite his 


CHAPTER TEN — Q15 


place as a man, while if she, owing to loss of male 
provider, is obliged to go “ out” to “battle” sim- 
ilarly, that is held to be unfeminine and a real mis- 
fortune. 

The word “ out” in this connection we should dis- 
miss completely from our foggy minds. We are in the 
world once and for all. We are not planted in a lot 
of private holes, with the rest of the broad earth for 
a mere battle-field, a place to sally forth into and grab 
something. Can you conceive of a world of human 
beings contentedly staying at home all the time if 
their supposititious booty could be handed in at the 
door without “battle”? We don’t go “ out,” we go 
‘in ” to the world for our natural and necessary ac- 
tivities, without which we should cease to be human. 

What we do in the world is not, or should not be, 
fighting. ‘Those who insist on fighting instead of 
working should be promptly locked up and taught 
better; they disturb the peace, interfere with legitimate 
industry, and dishonestly run off with the products of 
other people’s labour. 

An oversexed male, full of belligerence, actuated 
by his primitive masculine tendency to scatter and 
destroy instead of the later-developed, feminine-based 
race-tendency to construct, goes forth like a savage to 
hunt and fight. He finds what he wants, someone else 
has made it, and he seeks to get it away from that 
person by exercising the same traits as those used by 
any hunting animal, force or fraud. We have an 
immense number of predatory individual animals, both 


216 HUMAN WORK 


male and female, all included and maintained by the 
social organism, yet merely feeding on its tissues; we 
have a still greater number, indeed the vast majority 
of our workers, who, though in reality engaged in pro- 
ductive labour, imagine that their business is to get 
something from other people, and so strive to restrict 
their output and enlarge their intake as far as pos- 
sible. 

The plain thief and pauper we recognise as social 
parasites, active and passive, and seek to remove; but | 
our frank, general attitude of parasitism and pre- 
dacity we do not recognise as an evil, the evil which 
necessarily tends to these ultimate forms. An indi- 
vidual animal has no productive power and skill, he 
simply takes what he wants when he finds it, if he can, 
and cheats, fights, or kills to get it. The collective 
animal produces wealth by co-ordinate labour. There 
is no faintest element of combat involved in the eco- 
nomic processes of society. The only ‘ competition ” 
legitimate in social life is the beneficent competition 
between constantly improving methods of service. For 
any collective animal to take advantage of his safe 
place in the broad-based social life, and from that 
vantage-point to take what he can from the social 
product without himself producing anything, is a 
treason so colossal as quite to paralyse our moral 
judgment. 

Our little egoistic scheme of ethics, while it is big 
enough to grasp and blame an interpersonal fraud or 
theft, is incapable of comprehending this great field of 


CHAPTER TEN 217 


social injury; and, if the social traitor keeps up the 
personal ethical standards we are acquainted with, we 
do not condemn his larger sin,—we don’t know how. 

Here it is simply indicated that the initial error lies 
in looking at the world as a place to go out to and 
get things from by any necessary means, whereas in 
plain fact it is a place to go into and give things to— 
to labour in, to create in, to produce and distribute in, 
to exercise those social faculties which constitute our 
human life. 

To work is to make something or distribute some- 
thing; it has nothing to do with taking or fighting. 
The fighting and grabbing attitude comes from primi- 
tive animal egoism, a low rudimentary condition, and 
the morbid overplus of sex-energy in the male. The 
association of shame with work on account of the slave 
will pass when we see the orderly progression of human 
association and the place held in it by that early social 
functionary. 

The Social organism requires a close and permanent 
connection between its myriad constituents. These 
constituents first began to combine sporadically, on 
lines of natural attraction, as in the family, and 
through the woman’s industry. For men to be drawn 
into the social relationn—men, whose whole nature was 
individual and combative, whose whole idea of exertion 
was to fight something,—required force. Only on pain 
of death, as the unkilled captive, did the slave learn 
to work, to apply his energy to the service of others. 
Most of the conscious associations of slavery were un- 


218 HUMAN WORK 


pleasant, slavery and work were held as identical, and 
the slave hates work as he hates slavery. But they 
are not identical. Slavery is a transient, superficial 
relation, one of our telic processes, useful in its place, 
but soon outgrown. Work is a permanent, essential 
relation, a genetic social process increasing with our 
growth. 

Men were first held together in exchange of labour 
by the force of the slave system as they are now held 
together in exchange of labour by the force of the 
contract system, an equally transient and superficial 
device. The real economic process going on is the 
gradual evolution of highly specialised and smoothly | 
interrelated workers, with an abundant, easy circula- 
tion of their products, and the more arbitrary methods 
of developing this condition came first as more ar- 
bitrary political methods came first. The Owner 
was a primitive despot, the Employer is a constitu- 
tional monarch, and democracy is now working out a 
higher, subtler, freer relation—that of the true Co- 
operator—in economics as in politics. 

The shame feeling, based on woman and slave, grew, 
rather than relaxed, in the period of serfdom. In 
fatuous ignorance of the source of their wealth and 
power, the fighting and governing class despised the 
hand that fed them, and the ancestral accumulation of 
this ungrateful idiocy gives us our ingrained contempt 
for “ labour,” “ trade,” ‘* the working classes.” 

The workers themselves, equally ignorant, though 
more excusably, accepted this feeling as correct, and 


CHAPTER TEN 219 
strove to escape singly from the only honourable posi- 
tion on earth, that of Maker, Doer, Giver, to the sup- 
posed dignity of a Social Parasite. ‘The Theory of 
the Leisure Class ” has been most luminously expounded 
by Veblen, but there is room for much more study in 
‘the theory of the working class,” the glorious, irre- 
sistible, upward pressure of which, by its accumulating 
superfluity of rich product, has, besides all its good 
effects, made possible the morbid secretions and dele- 
terious growths of society, the indolent ulcer of idle 
wealth, the waste of tissue in extreme poverty, the wide 
range of diseases, disgusting and terrible, with which 
Society is hampered in its economic processes. 

This feeling of contempt for work, shame in work, 
once recognised as one of our evil inheritances from the 
black past, we should set ourselves to check and dismiss 
it as rapidly as possible. Inthe individual by con- 
sciously rebutting the old feeling and cultivating its 
opposite one of honour and pride, and in the race by 
an instant and thorough change in the education of 
children, through home, school, and church, book, 
picture, and story. It is gratifying to note that 
America is already far ahead of any other nation in 
its honour of work, and that even the woman-parasite, 
as well as the leisure-class parasite, is feeling it in this 
livest of societies. 

Our aversion to work as being an expense of energy 
is quite right. Human work, as we have seen in the 
last chapter, should not constitute a draught on indi- 
vidual energy. When it does so there is something 


220 HUMAN WORK 


wrong. As in our constant analogy, the physical or- 
ganism, we may be sure that when it is an effort to 
breathe something is wrong with one’s lungs. 

Our personal fund of energy is strictly limited, and 
nature’s processes tend to save it—the law of conserva- 
tion of energy. Very slowly and gradually has been 
accumulated in us our private storage battery of nerve 
force, with its stock of arrested energy and its power 
to turn it on when necessary to modify action. This 
supply of energy is limited. ‘This we must not waste, 
it is the hoarded wealth of all organic time. 

This is the precious capital which nature subtly 
saves by rapidly making each action into a function, 
passing it over from the class requiring cerebral force, 
volition, to the class of unconscious, habitual action, 
where the energy of the universe flows through the 
smoothly attuned organism and costs it nothing. Any 
new conscious action costs us an expense of our own 
personal and private supply of energy, and that ex- 
pense is what we instinctively recognise as wrong. The 
organism feels that it is being robbed of its most 
precious store, and resents it with every conscious atom. 
This is what makes us hate to work, at the same time 
defining work as “ what you don’t like to do.” 

Against this we clearly see the passive pleasure of a 
long-accustomed activity, the well-nigh unconscious 
discharge of energy along well-worn lines; and the 
active pleasure, the delight of doing what one likes 
to do. 

Detach from work the false ideas which make it 


CHAPTER TEN 221 


distasteful to us and there remains but one thing to 
blind us to its joy and glory: the waste of cerebral 
energy with which it is but too generally accompanied. 

We have already seen that the accumulation and 
discharge of energy is precisely what an organism is 
for; it is an elaborate instrument slowly developed for 
that purpose, as a steam engine is made to “ get up ” 
and “let off” steam. A steam engine fired up and 
superheated, but doing nothing, must let off steam or 
burst. So a human engine, fired with all our splendid 
fund of social energy, must either work it off, let it off 
in mere fizz and whistle, or burst. Our leisure class— 
most copiously fired and fed and stoutly refusing to 
work—fill all the air about them with futile sizzlings 
and noises. They have to, or burst. | 

Normal work, 7. e., that special social function for 
which the individual is specially fitted, requires but little 
energy to learn to do, because he likes to do it, and, 
once learned, runs easily for life, the pleasure steadily 
increasing with the power and skill. Abnormal work, 
for which the individual is not fitted, is a suicidal waste 
of energy, and we are right to hate it. It costs im- 
mense draughts on one’s vitality to learn to do what 
one does not like, an unremitting pressure of cerebral 
energy, a veritable hemorrhage of what is as much life 
as blood is; and even when the relief of habit is at- 
tained it does not grow into joy, for the creature is 
crippled in the dreadful process. A man may learn to 
walk on his hands and feed himself with his toes, but 
he will not enjoy it much. 


222 HUMAN WORK 

The advantage of organic life is in its specialisation. 
Specialisation to one thing involves lack of power to 
do others. We do not ask a tooth to see, or an eye to 
grind corn. So the whole majestic advantage of 
human life lies in its organic relation, in its specialised, 
interdependent service, each for all and all for each. 
This is attained by means of a subtle differentiation 
of individuals, developing from generation to genera- 
tion a rising fund of power, of skill, of joy in execu- 
tion. In this differentiation comes at once the most 
benefit to society through the product and the most 
benefit to the individual through the process of making 
it—the work. Without it, in any arbitrary forcing 
of individuals to do this or that for which they are not 
fitted, which, therefore, they do not like, we find the 
main condition of social waste and individual suffering. 

The laws of social evolution, acting unconsciously 
through us, tend to evolve a highly specialised, in- 
tricate, organic life-form, rich, powerful, boundlessly 
happy. Our conscious external laws and customs, 
our government by ‘‘ the dead hand,” our insane rev- 
erence for mummies, tend to check, thwart, and pervert 
this orderly growth. We try to preserve the “ all- 
around man,” which is as if we tried to preserve active 
monads in our bodily structure. 

We try to force people to do what they do not like, 
we boast of our paleozoic educational system that it 
trains the child to do what he does not like, as if to like 
one’s work were criminal! Blinded and confused by 
inherited falsehoods; kept back in specialisation by 


CHAPTER TEN 223 


our mistaken education; arbitrarily misplaced by 
superficial conditions; and driven, on pain of death, 
by our system of artificially distributed nutrition (not 
merely “no work, no pay,” but ‘ This kind of work 
whether you like it or not, or no pay!” ), the majority 
‘of human beings are not doing normal work. What 
they do hurts them; they do it under pressure of neces- 
sity ; and they are quite right in assuming that without 
that pressure they would not work—that way! But 
this theory falls to the ground when the false condi- 
tions are removed. A free discharge of energy—the 
limitless energy of the universe through our intricate 
machine—is pleasure, not pain. -It does not overdraw 
on our little store, but rather augments it. We are 
stronger instead of weaker for right exercise of power. 

Every healthy child delights in work, to watch it, 
imitate it, take part in it. Every healthily placed 
man delights in his work, the man who is doing what he 
is particularly built to do—what we call a “born 
doctor ” 
fit °—yes, and operator as well as poeta. 


or a “born engineer.” “ Poeta nascitur, non 


Social evolution is natural, and natural organic 
processes are easy and agreeable, unconscious if they 
require no cerebral attention, and, if they do, attended 
with sensations of pleasure. Granting, as we have 
done, that waste of energy is an evil, and any over- 
draught on our reserve fund of cerebral energy is 
naturally resented by the organism, it is still main- 
tained that normal human work does not involve any 
waste of energy or any draught on the cerebral reserve 


224 HUMAN WORK 
more than is pleasant to expend, and results in increase 
rather than diminishing of that store. 

The conditions of normal work are these: First, the 
individual should be well stocked. A sick man cannot 
enjoy work, a crippled, deformed person is not fitted 
to work, and a congenital pauper, one born without 
that inheritance of nervous energy which should in- 
crease with each generation, is unable to work with 
pleasure. But given, first, a normal individual, he 
should, second, work at what he likes best. This means 
social specialisation, and requires for its right develop- 
ment such education and opportunity as shall bring out 
all possible differentiation of faculty. So widely lack- 
ing are these conditions, so hampered is our choice of 
work, and so undeveloped our power of choosing, that 
we look with honest envy at the man who does love his 
work and can do the work he loves, like Agassiz or Lord 
Kelvin. 

In normal social conditions every man would do the 
work he loved and love the work he did, so life and hap- 
piness would become synonymous. | 


XI: SPECIALISATION 


7 


Summary 


Organisation means specialisation. Military organisa- 
tion, trades-unions, and trusts. Guerilla bands m 
mdustrial organisation. Unspecialised primitive life, 
the higher the life-form the more specialisation. The 
* all-around”’ savage. Injury of our present speciali- 
sation under false conditions. Waste of energy. Man 
of thirty who died of old age. Canoe-and steamer. 
Effect of errors. Normal conditions of specialisation: 
shorter hours, variety of work, wide education. Owner- 
ship m collective production. Specialisation should 
imcrease product and decrease effort; it does, but the 
advantage is misplaced. Hours of labour m propor- 
tion to mterest. Especial cruelty im our, conditions 
of specialisation. Specialisation proves collectivity. 
Absurdity of “ self-support” idea. Our progress due 
to such social distribution as we have, not to “ selfssup- 
port.” Society feeding on itself. The Social sacrifice. 
“ Unskilled labour” a product of high social develop- 
ment. Our mistaken attitude toward it. The real 
nature of it. Serf and noble. Savage's exciting 
monologue. Unskilled labour does not require inferior 
men. Line of social growth. Highly specialised 
work involves extremely simple details. Our misuse of 
above fact owing to false concepts. Unskilled labour 
is high social service. We punish imstead of paying, 
or promotmg. Height of ingratitude. 


XI 
SPECIALISATION 


Human work being an organic process, it must of 
course specialise. Those who cry out against speciali- 
sation and seek to uphold a mythical “ all-around man ” 
are ignorant of the nature of social functions. The 
very first condition of organic life is division of labour, 
and as the organism develops the complexity of that 
division develops with it. The strength and efficiency 
of any organism depends not so much on its bulk and 
weight as on the prompt and perfect co-ordination of 
its parts. 

This is a truism in military organisation, which is 
an old game with us, but we do not seem to understand 
it in industrial organisation, which is a new one. In 
the military body we have long ago learned to consider 
the whole before the part and the purpose of that whole 
as a measure of action for each part, but in the eco- 
nomic body we are yet a mob of savages. The ego 
concept is perforce set aside in military life; jn eco- 
nomic life it still rules. In military ethics one never 
hears that ‘“self-preservation is the first law of 
nature ”’; no soldier thinks of justifying rank cowardice 
and insubordination with the plea that “a man must 
live!*” Neither is there any objection to the widest 
specialisation, to careful grading of officers, to the 

227 


228 HUMAN WORK 


complete separation of surgeon and chaplain, engineer 
and commissary. No one seeks to maintain the “ all- 
around man ” in the army. 

Military organisation is our oldest and so best de- 
veloped form. Its purpose is crude and easy of per- 
ception; its impulses are inherent in the masculine 
nature; its methods, like those of old-established 
churches, appeal to the primitive instincts. The gor- 
geous ritual of military form has much to do with our 
allegiance to it. But in the now far more important 
co-ordination of industrial forces no such progress is 
made. In place of splendid uniforms we have the 
soiled and soul-depressing garments of our miscel- 
laneous workers. Instead of “esprit du corps” we 
have the beautiful spirit of “ every man for himself, 
and the devil take the hindmost.” 

Instead of “* glory ” we have before us only “* booty ” 
instead of ‘* honour ” we have the incessant struggle of 
the civil law to check the ceaseless manceuvring of dis- 
honesty. And in place of one resistless organisation 
we have at best the progress of the trades-unions and 
at worst those guerilla bands, the small, fierce hordes 
of warring trusts, fighting each other and preying on 
all of us. 

The inevitable increase of specialisation has gone 
on, but under the disadvantage of this crude position 
it has carried with it a wholly unnecessary burden of 
evil. Specialisation in labour starts at the very be- 
ginning of our growth, at first being only an arrange- 
ment of whole men, each man making a whole thing. 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 229 
To this stage of social evolution some are now wishing 
to revert—a sad waste of wishing! We might as well 
wish to be invertebrates again as to sigh for past 
periods of social development. 

The lower the creature the less its organic specialisa- 
tion. ‘There are some so indeterminate and undivided 
that they do not know their heads from their tails; cut 
them in two and they promptly produce a new head 
and a new tail and go about their business as before. 
This beast is a fine example for the * all-around man.” 

The higher the creature the more specialised. The 
more worthily a part fulfils one function the less 
worthily it can fulfil others. When the paw becomes a 
hand it ceases to be a paw. The more fit the hand 
for a hand’s use the less fit for a foot’s use. It would 
in no way benefit the body to have a set of loose, inter- 
changeable organs capable of doing a little of every- 
thing and nothing very well. An “ all-around ” organ 
would not be as valuable as any single-hearted servant 
that gives its one regular contribution to the body’s 
good. 

So in the social organism, our line of progress has 
been from the “ all-around” savage to the absolutely 
one-sided activity of the specialised workman who con- 
tributes his best efforts to one line of service. ‘To 
learn to do one thing and do it well” is what makes the 
great artist, the great scientist, the great preacher, 
the great mechanic, the great electrician. Social ser- 
vice requires the steadily increasing specialisation of its 
constituents. 


230 HUMAN WORK 


When you want a dentist you want to find him in his 
office, with the accumulated skill of long study and 
constant practice; you do not want to wait for him 
to come in from the plough and wash his hands. All 
this we know well enough, and yet we recognise the 
injurious effects to the individual of the kind of spe- 
cialisation we see about us, and have not yet been able 
to reconcile the two. 

If the individual is injured there must be evil some- 
where, that is quite true. No society can prosper at 
the expense of its constituents. If the individual is 
reduced in physical strength and health, in personal 
happiness, or in the best social usefulness by his work, 
the process he is engaged in must be abnormal. Now 
let us see whether the evils so conspicuous in the lives 
of our highly specialised workers to-day are inherent 
in their degree of specialisation, or whether they are 
coincident rather than consequent and due to quite 
other causes. 

What is it that injures the man who turns a crank 
all day? It is an evil both of omission and commission, 
involving a waste of cerebral energy in compelling the 
attention of the human brain to a point of execution 
so narrow and uninteresting, and also the lack of de- 
velopment involved in doing nothing else. To forcibly 
focus the attention on a detail for a long time is 
a ruinous expense of nerve force, and it is this which 
makes the employment of children in such work so 
doubly damnable. ‘To concentrate and hold attention 
is not natural to childhood; that is why they fail to do 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 231 


it and are so frequently killed and injured by their 
machines. Accidents to working children happen 
mostly toward the end of the day’s work, as they grow 
more unequal to the unnatural strain. 

And when the child does prematurely muster all his 
powers and display as a child the concentration of a 
man, he is thereby ruined for life, prematurely aged, a 
wasted and broken thing before he is grown. In the 
work of the Chicago Settlements a case was found 
where an honest, industrious man of thirty broke down 
and died, and the doctor’s verdict was that he died of 
old age; every part of him was used up by excessive 
labour from early childhood. It is bad enough for the 
adult. The paralysing effects of twelve hours’ repeti- 
tion of some one small mechanical effort is painfully 
clear to any observer. 

Does it follow, therefore, that we must discontinue 
the machine and go back to the period where “ one man 
makes one thing,” the ideal of our well-meaning re- 
versionists? Is it so much more noble for one man to 
make one canoe than for a thousand mén to make an 
ocean steamer? Must we go without the ocean steamer 
and go back to the canoe period of civilisation because 
it is better to be an all-around savage than a man who 
makes rivets by machinery? Is there no way of saving 
the individual life of the rivet-maker without “ giving 
up the ship”? 

Assuredly there is. The evil effects of this complex, 
modern work do not lie in its complexity, or its delicate 
mechanical accuracy, but.may be traced straight to the’ 


232 HUMAN WORK 


door of our existing economic fallacies and errors; to 
the overwork and underpay and general evil conditions 
based on those errors. 

Approach the blissful savage making his own canoe 
and hire him at a minimum wage to make canoes for 
you all day and every day for the weary years of a 
short, worn-out life; the fact that he made a whole 
thing would not suffice to make him happy or develop 
that so desirable globularity. If the riveter took the 
same interest in his steamer that the savage did in his 
canoe, and worked no longer at his riveting than the 
savage at his cutting and sewing, his fractional pro- 
duction of. an enormous common engine for common 
good would give him more pleasure than the savage’s 
unitary production of a tiny private engine for private 
good. 

The natural conditions of social specialisation are 
these: In proportion to the degree of specialisation 
the time of work should be shortened and ‘the interest 
of the worker extended. 

It does not hurt the human mind—a strong, 
healthy, well-developed mind—to make rivets for a 
little while. 

“Ah, but,” you will reply, “if the riveter only 
worked a little while he could not earn enough to 
live on.” 

Here is where our economic fallacies come in. The 
-man with the machine can turn out as many rivets in 
an hour as the man working by hand could in a day. 
Therefore his hour’s work is equal to what was a day’s 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 233 


work. That is the value of machinery. It gives more 
wealth for less effort, the maximum product with the 
minimum expense of nerve force and of time. Every 
step of our elaborate mechanical specialisation should 
have relieved the worker of more and more hours of 
labour and set that much time and strength free for 
other use. 

The infinite multiplication of wealth by machinery 
meets its own problem of overspecialisation. Here 
are a hundred men, making cloth alone on a hundred 
hand looms, and earning thereby a dollar a day each— 
one hundred dollars. Here are these hundred men or- 
ganised, specialised; ten of them run machine looms, 
turning out cloth tenfold, equal to a thousand dollars 
aday. Other ten, specialised, run the mill and its busi- 
ness; twenty of them with machines earning ten times 
what the hundred did, or forty of them working half 
a day each, or eighty of them working quarter of a 
day. 

The earning: power of the man plus the machine is so 
enormously multiplied that he is richly able to take 
the needed rest and variety of exercise which will enable 
him to do his wearing work without injury, and at the 
same time give society the benefit of the extreme spe- 
cialisation. 

** But—but,” cries the offended reader, “ the man 
does not own the machine! he did own the loom. It 
takes capital to run a mill, and capital has to be 
paid!” 

The question of property rights comes in later, in 


234 HUMAN WORK 


Chapter XV. This is all a question of men, of human 
beings, and how they best work together, doing the 
most for Society with the least injury to themselves. 
This chapter is not taking up the question of capital 
nor of property, but simply seeking to show that spe- 
cialisation, as such, need not injure the worker, because 
the very nature of specialisation is to reduce man’s 
work. Why we have also made it reduce man’s pay 
is not so easily explained. That the greatest multi- 
plier of wealth should impoverish the producer surely 
indicates some defect in our methods. 

Specialisation perfects and multiplies production, 
and reduces effort. This inevitably increases wealth 
and leisure. If the wealth and leisure are monopolised 
in one quarter and the contributary specialist is sacri- 
ficed in the process, it does not prove the specialisation 
to be wrong, but the distribution of result; and that 
we will take up in the chapter on Distribution. Mean- 
while the law of specialisation goes on and gives us 
social servants more and more exquisitely adapted to 
some one function. With normal economic conditions 
they would take full share in the resultant social gain, 
and be quite free to combat the possible ill effects of 
their position. 

The shortening of hours allows of another quite 
simple and natural effect. Where work is so broad and 
general as to require a whole man’s whole working time, 
as of the teacher, artist, or large manager in any in- 
dustry, it is thereby so interesting that a man can give 
his whole time to it without belittling effects. (‘ Whole 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 235 


working time ” need not be more than four to six hours, 
even at our stage of mechanical evolution. ) 

Where work is so narrow and fractional as not to 
interest a man for his whole time, it is therefore so 
specialised that he need not give his whole time to it. 

The simple turning of a crank for an hour wearies 
the brain equal to larger effort, but does not forbid 
that brain some other labour. If the specialty is one 
of exquisite subtlety of particular skill, as with those 
girls in the Treasury who test banknotes by touch, no 
other labour should be entered upon which would tend 
to blur or weaken that skill, only rest and recreation. 

A properly educated human creature, in full touch 
with the whole great working world, can support his 
or her own concentrated effort by virtue of conscious 
connection with the whole, can see the ship in the rivet. 
Well nourished socially, keenly alive to our gain, our 
progress, and to the relative value of his own depart- 
ment of service and his own share in it, not looking at 
the work as his, done for his pay, but as ours and done 
for our benefit, the normal human being can not only 
sustain extreme specialisation, but glory in it. 

Our especial cruelty in this regard is that we con- 
demn to exhausting hours of extreme specialisation the 
very people least fitted to bear it, the ill-nourished 
physically and socially, the uneducated, the dull and 
dark of mind. Or, conversely, we deprive our ex- 
tremely specialised social servants of exactly those 
things by which alone they can sustain the demands of 
that service. 


236 HUMAN WORK 


A man with wide-spread, active social consciousness, 
in full contact and exchange with all parts of the great 
body to which he belongs, will not suffer from its con- 
centrated and exclusive service, but will take glad part 


in forming an “ 


all-round ” Society. 

One would think that specialisation in labour ought 
to have forced upon every observer long ages since the 
fact that human work is something done for others. 
The shepherd and fisherman, first stage above sav- 
agery, may live upon the fruit of their labours; and 
so, in part, may the farmer, first stage of really 
civilised growth. They exchange the surplus, but they 
do directly consume part of what passes through their 
hands. } 

But the specialised workman, whether he carry a 
spade or a hod, swing an axe or hold a lever, is so 
obviously doing it for thousands of unknown other 
people that his position under the ego concept becomes 
miraculously difficult. He holds it, though, and, what 
is perhaps even more miraculous, so do we! So does 
the general consumer, whose life is maintained by the 
service of thousands of fellow beings,—who is housed 
by them, clothed by them, carried by them, guarded by 
them, taught by them,—still have the incredible face to 
maintain that these people who keep him alive are 
working for themselves! 

Harder than steel must be the cell walls of the brain 
that can live in such complex social relation as ours 
to-day and maintain that he or anyone: else “ takes 
care of himself.”” The error dates back in essence to 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 237 


the ego concept; but it becomes a thousand-fold more - 
erroneous when first the machine, and then the use of 
“natural forces ” applied to machinery, made possible 
our vast increase in specialisation. 

That one man must give his life to the art of weav- 
ing did not so narrow his mental area, or so cut him 
off from appreciation of other branches of human 
work, as this later development where a man wears out 
two sets of oak planks in one spot, standing still all 
his life, making nails! It seems “ a far cry” from the 
fractional construction of nails to the social conscious- 
ness, and yet, in the true order of industrial develop- 
ment, it brings it nearer. The more extreme the spe- 
cialisation the more extreme the interdependence, and 
that universal interdependence is the condition which 
calls for, and which develops, social consciousness. 

In the true order—but that order has been grievously 
interfered with by our own mistakes. Acting under 
the ego concept, and the system of competition which 
rests upon it, the increasing specialisation which is so 
normal a condition of social growth has been made to 
carry increasing evil consequences to the specialised 
worker. A just and rational position on the part of 
Society! As fast as its members specialise in compli- 
ance with the demands of social benefit, so fast does the 
benefited society stunt and degrade its benefactors! 

That there has been improvement in the rank and file 
of society is not denied, but it is due to our partial 
and grudging distribution of the social good along 
normal lines of public provision, such as free schools 


238 HUMAN WORK 
and libraries, and not to our idiotic ideas of individual 
work and pay. 

Where there is no such public provision our eco- 
nomic concepts act to crush and degrade the worker. 
That increasing specialisation with its mechanical ad- 
juncts, which should make it possible for a man to dis- 
charge his social obligations in an hour and then be 
free to contribute to progress by larger growth, we 
have taken advantage of to compel an amount and 
grade of labour alike ruinous to the individual in his 
immediate sacrifice and to the society composed of such 
sacrificed individuals. Men dying of thirst have been 
known to bite madly into their own flesh and suck the 
blood, but for a prosperous, growing society, rich, 
powerful, safe, intelligent, to make a steady diet of 
its own meat, is unreasonable. 

““The social sacrifice” is a very real and noble 
thing. It sometimes requires the lives of some of its 
members to preserve the life of the whole body. This 
sacrifice is always cheerfully made in war. It also 
requires the surrender of individual freedom of action 
to that complex interaction and unswerving duty which 
makes up the social service. But this sacrifice is more 
than compensated by the advantages given the indi- 
vidual in the life of the whole. A member of a big, 
complex society has not only a far better and happier 
personal life than his freely individual savage ancestor, 
but he has also share in the large, glorious, common life 
of that society. 

That is, he should have these things. As it is—owing 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 239 


to our antediluvian errors—he has to make the sacrifice, 
and in return he is reduced to an individual life far less 
gratifying than that of a healthy savage, yet knows no 
more of the splendid social consciousness belonging to his 
position than if he were that savage still. 

There is one feature in social specialisation so promi- 
nent and so important as to call for more detailed ex- 
planation. ‘This is the relation of what we call “ un- 
skilled labour” to social evolution. Our ideas of jus- 
tice in payment, of the necessary ‘* cheapness ” of cer- 
tain low grades of work, our patient tenderness or im- 
patient contempt for this immense class of humanity, 
rest on the assumption that human beings are widely 
unequal in ability; that most of them are of this low 
and cheap order, and that social progress lies in the 
advance of superior individuals, assisted in a humble 
way by the inferior. 

For these we must “furnish employment” of a 
simple character suited to their powers, and pay them 
with a modesty equal to their other limitations. Be- 
cause there are so many of them, their competition for 
the humble tasks allotted keeps the price of unskilled 
labour very low indeed. Through organisation they 
have forced the price up a little, but most of us con- 
sider this as unjustifiable in strict economic law. 

If it is shown that low wages for low labour keeps 
that labour always low, and indeed makes it lower; that 
out of the impoverished environment we inevitably breed 
defectives and degenerates, diseases and crimes; and 
that farther, because a hard and unfavourable environ- 


240 HUMAN WORK 

ment promotes fecundity, therefore this low rate of 
wages tends to increase the birth-rate of the lowest 
people, thus making a vicious circle of social stagna-— 
tion and deterioration—if these things are proved to 
us, we say it cannot be helped—it is a condition of 
human nature. ‘These inferior people are the bulk of 
humanity; they cannot do high-grade labour; it would 
not be fair to pay the plentiful ‘“ cheap labour” as 
much as the scarce and therefore more expensive kind, 
so there you are! As a way of escape from this posi- 
tion “the brotherhood of man” tries to uplift the 
lowly, but the majority do not accept this brotherhood 
theory. Or they say, ‘ Brother or not, these are such 
hopelessly inferior brothers that we will not consent 
to any levelling which would reduce us to their grade, 
and they cannot be raised to ours.” 

Now here is the true position. ‘* Unskilled labour ” 
is a product of social evolution. Among savages there 
is no unskilled labour. Each man must be skilled in 
several lines to keep himself alive. In his pre-social con- 
dition ‘of individualism, his life depending immediately 
upon his own exertions, he necessarily develops skill in 
his essential activities. No heavy-eyed, slow-witted, 
hod-carrying grade of efficiency could maintain itself 
in a status of individual savagery. The “man with 
the hoe”? comes Jater—much later. He is produced, 
developed, maintained, by a highly differentiated so- 
ciety. The nobleman evolves the serf—they are parts 
of one fighting organisation. The mill-owner and his 
‘hands ” are part of one working organisation. 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 241 

The individual savage is swift, alert, vigorous, senti- 
nelled by the keenest of senses, served by prompt and 
varied abilities of many sorts. But his action, though 
more perfect, is on a lower grade in industrial evolu- 
tion. He would not be capable, though under never so 
dreaded penalties, of working, his hfe long, in one 
fractional line of social service. 

The more society develops the more widely differen- 
tiated become its labours. In its differentiation there 
comes to be an immense proportion of very simple 
things to do; simple because they are tiny parts of 
something extremely complex. The savage’s life is 
anything but “simple.” His elaborate and exciting 
monologue requires of him the whole gamut of indi- 
vidual capacity in constant shock and change. But in 
the peace and power of a great civilisation, in the or- 
ganic* spread of social functions, there are more and 
more kinds of labour which are so infinitely simplified 
that a dolt can do them. 

It does not follow that a dolt must do them! It does 
not follow that we should hunt out all our inferior 
persons to do these unelevating things, and so remain 
inferior. It does not follow that we should keep the in- 
ferior person so long at his unelevating task as to 
further lower his inferiority; that we should pay him 
so little as to prevent any development from outside 
advantages ; or that, worst of all, we should so condemn 
his children to their subminimum share of his “ mini- 
mum wage” as to make them lower yet. 

In our ignorance of the nature of society, and the 


Q42 HUMAN WORK 


nature of work; in our cheerful blindness to the les- 
sons of history; with our poor choked and twisted 
brains, so crammed with the follies of our ancestors, 
and so weakened by what we have called education that 
they cannot think; we have taken for granted that so- 
ciety had to have about so much “ unskilled labour ” to 
provide for, and could only provide for it by “ furnish- 
ing employment ” suited to its powers. 

If we can once recognise the facts in the case, we 
will change our behaviour fast enough. Observe the 
line of social growth. Here is a nascent society of a 
vague group of savages, feebly held together by the 
pressure of a common danger; feebly drawn together by 
the attraction of a common need. So held and drawn 
the same forces which grouped the cells and started the 
growth of physical organisms worked upon them, and 

they began to differentiate in function. 

Follow one line of work, such as the clothing of so- 
ciety. The individual savage took a skin off another 
animal and put it on himself; that was the beginning. 
It required in him, and in his squaw, the highly ex- 
citing and agreeable exercise of the rudiments of many 
trades. He hunted, fought, killed, and skinned the 
beast. She tanned and dressed, cut and sewed, with 
elaborate decoration. All very interesting. 

Now comes the evolution of that industry on in- 
evitable lines. First, the division of trades; one hunted, 
another tanned, another sewed, and so on. ‘Then, as 
society increased, as skill increased, as productivity in- 
creased, as commerce increased, we find these trades in- 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 243 
creasing in importance, in bulk, and in complexity ; 
until now we have one garment going through a thou- 
sand hands between the wool or cotton fibre, and the 
wearer of the dress. 

In this process, a perfectly healthy social process, the 
fractional details of the work become extremely small 
and simple, and our mechanical ingenuity has made 
them smaller and simpler yet; till no more skill or judg- 
ment is required than a factory child or poor dull 
> can apply. 


In these familiar facts see the real principle in- 


sweated ‘* garment worker ’ 


volved. Social progress has so differentiated labour as 
to make infinitely short, easy, and simple to a thousand 
co-workers what was once long, difficult, and complhi- 
cated for one. These beneficently simple processes make 
possible the use of ‘ unskilled labour ”; make it pos- 
sible for society to maintain in its service individual 
working capacity lower than that of a savage, lower 
almost than the beast. 

But here is our great error. Unskilled labour does 
not require the unskilled labourer. Unskilled labour 
can be performed equally well by skilled labourers of 
the highest sort, as mere play, as rest from these more 
exacting functions. In proportion to its simplicity and 
ease, its extreme mechanical perfection of adjustment, 
is, or should be, the saving of time involved. 

Here is a world, all shod, at the. expense of a large 
amount of individual labour, every man making his 
own shoes. Here is a world, all shod, at far less ex- 
pense of labour, when the shoemaker gives his special- 


Q44 HUMAN WORK 


ised skill to the business. Here is the world, all shod, 
at infinitely less expense of labour; when the shoe man- 
- ufactory, with specialised labour and machinery, pro- 
duces a thousand-fold more swiftly and easily; and a 
developed commerce distributes around the world. Now, 
if the shoes of the world are made socially, with a 
thousandth part the time and labour required to make 
them individually, how does it happen that the makers 
of shoes are working harder and longer than ever? 
Save indeed as the trades-union, in ceaseless and costly 
combat, has in some degree shortened the time and 
raised the wages. 

It is because of our familiar group of delusions in 
economics. It is because we so wholly fail to see the 
organic nature of the process, and what is really the 
line of social advantage in it. We see the heavy, awk- 
ward, dirty, ignorant men digging in our streets, and 
say, ‘** Poor fellows! Such as they can do no other 
work! Stern nature has made them inferior, and it is 
fortunate for them that there is this plain, simple work, 
which they are able to do.” 

What we do not see is that the plain, simple work is 
part of a highly complex social process. Your nimble 
savage has no ditch to dig; no road to build; no sewer 
to clean. This is social service; not of the lowest, but 
of the highest. The more advanced the society, the 
more simplified the minute subdivisions of its great and 
complex processes. Your nimble savage does not have 
to do one thing, one fraction of a fraction of a thing, 
for twelve hours a day—or ten—or even eight. If he 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 245 


did—if we did—we who look over the fence at the rude 
gnomes who labour in the trenches in our vivisected city 
to-day—we should become as they. 

Unskilled labour is high social service, and social 
sacrifice. It is not so interesting and developing to 
the individual as the activities of savagery, but it is 
more essential to the country’s good, to the power and 
peace of the world. ‘This noble service could be ren- 
dered without its present awful penalty. I do not speak 
of its low wages, but of its heavy punishment. 

Here is work done for the service of humanity; not 
for any low and primitive service either, but to main- 
tain our highest social grade of development. This 
work, subtle, elaborate, important, only simple in its 
extreme subdivision, we have chosen in our ignorance 
to consider ‘‘ low.” The people who do it we first com- 
pelled by force; we now compel on pain of starvation; 
they are “ low” too, and cannot help themselves. 

When we understand the real grades of labour, we 
shall see this to be of the highest, and as such, to have 
its limits and dangers. Such highly specialised work 
cannot be followed for long hours, that is a cruel in- 
jury; and never needs to be followed for long hours, 
because the very law of its development is the saving 
of time and energy. Society, as a whole, loses the 
major part of the advantage of its specialised develop- 
ment, by ruthlessly degrading and defrauding the very 
functionary through whom that development is at- 
tained. 


Mie wODVCTION 
Summary 


Work is production and distribution. Joy of pro- 
duction. Transmission again. Pleasure in expression 
more than impression. Social stimulus. Arrested dis- 
tribution. Increase in production. Shoes. Collective 
pride. ““Owned’’ machinery. Effect of false con- 
cepts. George Eliot’s “ Stradivarius.” Art recognised 
as world service. The “ Pot-boiler.” “ Saving” and 
“ serving” one’s country. Traitor and coward. Line 
of evolution in a productive industry. Effect of errors. 
“ Duty to employer,” etc. Payment not the right in- 
centive. Reactive effect of production. ‘“* Greeking.” 
Effect of great work on society. Physical heredity, 
social heredity and transmission. Bicycle. Benefit of 
making, of using. We “exhaust the soil” of hu- 
manity by denying it right use of its product. Want 
theory. Degraded press. Object of production. False 
production. Individual is society—feels and represents 
it. Social consciousness mistaken for self-conscious- 
ness. “Self-expression”’ and social service. “* The 
songs of a people.” Position of the artist. Ewapres- 
sion is also transmission. “ Poor Jones!” Art a so- 
cial function. Depravity in highly specialised func- 
tion. The presumptuous eye. Art for humanity’s 
sake. 


XII 
PRODUCTION 


Work is in two main lines, Production and Distribu- 
tion; to make something, or to hand it about, is human 
industry. 

To create is an intense satisfaction; to combine ele- 
ments and produce new results, whether it be a bridge, 
a basket, or a loaf of bread—to make is in itself a joy. 
But so is it a joy to give something to somebody, 
whether at first-hand, or in a combination with many; 
to spread, to disseminate, to feel the current of human 
good flow through you; both functions are happy. 

The universe is an everlasting production, force 
taking form, energy embodied, disembodied, re-em- 
bodied—this is the game of living. Our little mid-sta- 
tion of consciousness feels the pressure of natural forces 
on both sides, pushing in through the sensory nerves; 
pushing out through the motor nerves. Owing to our 
early mistake about the superior pleasure of impres- 
sion, and our perverse insistence that expression is only 
a guarded outlay of limited force, by which to secure 
desired impressions, we have never understood the na- 
ture of human production. | 

The pleasure of right impression is not to be denied. 
Every sensory nerve should have its proper stimulus. 
And man, with his immense collective sensorium, with 

249 


250 HUMAN WORK 


his highly developed personal sensations, due to so- 
cial evolution, and his power. of feeling with and for 
other people, has enormous capacity for the reception 
of pleasure. But what is all this pleasurable stimulus 
for? The brain is not merely a reservoir for stored 
sensation. A sensation is a certain amount of energy 
going into the human battery. Once in, it must be 
discharged in commensurate activity. 

Most interesting experiments in psychology are being 
made to-day, proving this, even in some immediate re- 
sult of a strong mental impression in unconscious 
bodily motion; as shown in studies among school chil- 
dren. As the brain develops it has increasing capac- 
ity to receive impressions, to retain and to arrange 
impressions; but nevertheless sometime that mass of 
impressions must come out in commensurate action, else 
disease ensues. The human brain, socially developed, 
and socially stimulated, has great power of expression ; 
that expression is in work, and work is in Production 
and Distribution. The productivity of the human race, 
even with its past and present checks and perversions, 
is the wonder of the ages. Guaranteed the swift and 
easy satisfaction of those ‘* wants ” our economists build 
so much on, the steady increase of impressed energy has 
resulted in as steady an increase of expressed energy, 
necessarily. 

Man receives stimulus from a thousand sources. 
Since we made mental impressions permanent and ex- 
changeable “‘in book form,” knowledge and emotion 
bottled, preserved, and distributed broadcast; there is 


CHAPTER TWELVE 251 


practically no limit to human stimuli; and, since with 
this increasing stimulus we have steadily reduced the 
difficulties of execution, our real problem is, how to 
provide right outlets for the productive energy of hu- 
manity. ‘This normal increase of power and execu- 
tion we have managed to check, however, quite ma- 
terially. We have gravely interfered with the natural 
distribution of stimulus up to the present time; but now 
our rapid multiplication of free school and free li- 
brary, with similar tendencies in other educational 
and recreative lines, is producing its natural result in 
increased energy. 

Even with what stimulus was open to us, our produc- 
tion should have been very great; but we have interfered 
with that also, in more ways than one. The principal 
obstacle here is the basic error of the Want theory. 
Holding that man works only to satisfy desire,—i. e., 
produces merely to consume,—we prostitute our share of 
the social energy to a factitious personal advantage; 
and try to govern the productive processes of society by 
the dictates of self-interest. Here you have a factory 
in which a hundred men turn out ten hundred pairs of 
shoes a day. What for? Why, for the feet of ten 
hundred people, of course—to shoe the world. ‘ Not 
so,” they protest. ‘‘ We are making these shoes for 
ourselves.” ‘* But you cannot wear ten pairs of shoes 
a day,my man!” ‘No, but I only do this work for the 
pay—and I can easily consume the pay for ten pair of 
shoes a day.” 

This poor man never understands his position as a 


252 HUMAN WORK 


social functionary with all its honour and pleasure. 

The Ego concept and the Want theory becloud his. 
mind. Even his personal pride in his personal work has 

lowered since the machine made his work collective, and 

his mind failed to keep pace with the machine, and make 

his joy and pride collective too. His pleasure is only 
in what he gets back from society in return for his — 
labours, and he gets very little. As part of this same 
ancient misconception of what work is, we find the in- 
credibly multiplied machinery of production ‘‘ owned ” 
by individuals; and manipulated by them under the 
same befogging ideas that lead the workman to “ limit 
his output.” | 

Never were any of the gross and childish supersti- 
tions of remotest savagery more injurious—or more 
ridiculous—than these rudimentary errors under which 
our economic development so blindly labours. We have 
our alleged ‘“ overproduction”? on the one hand— 
though a full supply of the good things of life is ob- 
tained by scarce one-tenth of the population of the 
world; and we have the ensuing and even more colossal 
absurdity of the restricted output—whether of the 
man who stints his day’s labour, or the group of finan- 
ciers who “ corner ” some social product, and say how 
much the world shall have. 

These muddy follies of our common mind—for if we 
did not all, or nearly all, believe in these principles of 
action, we would not for a moment allow such economic 
treason and misrule—together with allied fallacies of 
a similar nature, most seriously interfere with produc- 


CHAPTER TWELVE 253 


tion. Nevertheless, as the laws of nature are somewhat 
stronger than our evanescent misconceptions, we do see 
the tremendous increase in our productivity; and, in 
favoured instances, its grandeur and delight. As good 
an expression of this feeling as I know in literature is 
in George Eliot’s poem of ‘* Stradivarius.” 

Here is a man, developing an extremely specialised 
line of production, and clear of brain enough to see the 


joy and dignity of it. 


“ Antonio Stradivari has an eye 
That winces at false work and loves the true, 
With hand and arm that play upon the tool, 
As willingly as any singing bird 
Sets him to sing his morning roundelay 
Because he likes to sing and likes the song.” 


Our best known instances of normal or nearly normal 
production are found in art and science. Here you have 
a product which the world recognises as its own—not 
that of the individual maker. ‘‘ He has given to the 
world” such and such a picture, or statue; discovery 
in science or composition in music; to this world-service 
we give some, though an imperfect, honour; and we 
pity and even blame the man who “ prostitutes his 
art ** to the level of ‘‘ the pot-boiler.” Art is world- 
service, truly, but so is manufacture or commerce. A 
’ man should no more prostitute his “ trade” than his 
“art.” It is as base to make a “ pot-boiler” of your 
day’s work as of a book or a picture. No soldier is more 
actually “* serving his country ” in his occasional fight- 
ing, than is the workman in his continual working. 


254 HUMAN WORK 


“ saved ”? in sudden 


emergency, at considerable cost of immediate exertion 


One’s country sometimes has to be 


and sacrifice; but one’s country has to be kept alive all 
the time, at considerable cost of unceasing labour and 
some sacrifice too. Our patriotism, which rushes madly 
forward to “save the country ” when it is in visible 
danger, and, having saved it, proceeds to exploit it for 
personal advantage all the rest of the time, is on a 
par with love for one’s family, which would risk life 
to “ save” it, from flood, or fire, or injurious attack, 
and then mercilessly cheat it, starve it, keep it cold and 
dirty and ignorant and sick and vicious—when not “ in 
danger.” The danger to our country from our general 
neglect and misuse, and our frequent positive injury, is 
far greater than that of occasional war. We need a 
patriotism that will operate all the time. 

The human worker, whether a captain cf industry or 
in the ranks, who puts his personal safety and advan- 
tage before that of his country is exactly the same 
traitor and coward that the officer or private in the 
army would be who did the same thing. He does not 
know it, we do not know it, therefore no odium attaches 
to these public offenders. But the mischief they do is 
apparent in every branch of our economic processes. 

We have seen that human production is checked in 
amount by our lack of knowledge. It is injured in kind 
from the same cause. Normal production has an evo- 
- lution of its own. Follow the development of any one 
trade, and you will see as natural a growth as in a 
physical organ, marred of course by our errors, but 


CHAPTER TWELVE 255 


there under all. Take the building trades as an ex- 
ample. At the beginning we find primitive man en- 
larging a cave somewhat, or, lacking that retreat, put- 
ting up some shelter of boughs to screen him from the 
wind and rain, or spreading a hide for the same pur- 
pose. The act, repeated, develops skill, and the mind, 
dwelling over and over on the same problem, develops 
too, and sees better ways of accomplishment. The 
shelter of hide becomes the teepee or wigwam, and, 
cloth superseding leather, the tent in all its forms; but 
its growth is limited by mechanical conditions. The 
shelter of boughs is more open to improvement; and 
evolves slowly into hut, cabin, house. The materials 
used depending on the environment, the Eskimo builds 
of ice, the Chaldean of clay, and, slowly, by proof of 
superiority, stone was used wherever found. The prin- 
ciple of specialisation acting steadily upon this widen- 
ing current of functional ability, we have now that 
group of allied trades required to construct for modern 
man the material form in which he lives and works— 
without which he cannot live and work. 

A genealogical tree could be made, showing just 
where each branch diverged, the workers in wood, clay, 
and stone dividing early; the gradual appearance of 
the system of pipes and conduits which vitalise a 
house; the development of windows in all forms, of 
doors and their particular line of improvement, of in- 
terior finish, from daubed mud to artistic decoration ; 
and so on and so on, until we have now the house which 
stands knit to the city by waste pipe, water pipe, gas 


256 HUMAN WORK 


pipe, and electric wire; a house which represents the 
slow fruition of a thousand centuries, the contributed 
intelligence and skill of a million men. The evolution 
of this “ social form” is as natural and orderly as the 
evolution of any physical form. To the men through 
whom it grew the whole course should have been a 
pleasure and a pride, and in large measure it has been, 
in spite of all our misbeliefs. 

To feel within one’s self the tendency toward a cer- 
tain line of production, to “ learn the trade,” 7. e., sub- 
mit the brain to the accumulated stimulus of that line of 
production—to feel the racial skill begin to flow through 
one’s fingers—to do the thing well—better—best !—and . 
then, still unsatisfied, to relieve the pressure by new in- 
vention of ways even better than the best—that is the 
natural sensation of the producer. Against this have 
operated at every step the weight and darkness of our 
leaden lies. The child is not so watched and trained as 
to develop the fine sense of special ‘ calling” which 
shows the best path in life. Only the extreme case, the 
boy who would be a sailor, or a mechanic, or whatever 
he was meant to be, has the advantage of being where 
he belongs in the world’s work. But the average boy, 
with no special aptitude or pleasure in his trade, is put 
to work under the dominant idea, drilled in from in- 
fancy, that he is to work only because he has to—he 
has to in order to get the pay. The whole outlook of 
his position is lost. He has his head in a bag. All he 
sees is the week’s wage, and the work is. merely to be 
gotten through in order to get the wage. 


CHAPTER TWELVE 257 


We have known all along that this was a wrong at- 
titude, and have tried to inculcate upon the worker a 
sense of ‘ the nobility of labour,” of ‘* duty to his em- 
ployer,” of the “ common interest of capital and la- 
bour.” 

It does not ennoble the labourer to enlarge his self- 
ishness to the size of his employer’s. The employer 
is in exactly the same boat. He has no more sense of 
what his work is for than the “ hand” has. He too is 
looking only at his wages,—salary, income, profits, 
rent,—looking only at what he is to get from society, 
instead of what he is to do for it. The common interest 
_ of employer and employee, which is merely an interest 
in their common income, does not lift the cloud from 
labour. No interest is large enough to satisfy the 
human mind, except the social interest; the thrilling 
glory of working with and for the whole world at the 
trade you love best, and can do best. 

The workman should have such education as shall 
give him for a background the full knowledge of social 
evolution; and the special place of his own trade in 
that evolution. He should know just where it first ap- 
peared, how it grew, and why, the importance of its 
place to-day—and here there would, no doubt, be warm 
differences of opinion, debates and competition. The 
payment for his service should no more be the point of 
ambition with the workman, than with the penman, 
paintman, or rifleman. The producer is entitled to feel 
the full power and pride of production; and, in spite of 
our errors, this power and pride is felt by the well-placed 


258 HUMAN WORK 


workman, whose life is better than his belief—as human 
life always is. 

One of the most important features of this great so- 
cial function is the reactive effect on the functionary. 
The maker is inexorably modified by the thing made. 
If the thing made develops along normal lines, the 
maker develops with it. If it does not—if it is 
checked or perverted in its growth, so is the worker. 
Working is humanity’s growing. In the act of work- 
ing the individual is modified, and by the work accom- 
plished humanity is modified. Also the accomplished 
work remains, like coral, the record of the height of 
those who did it. 

In the case of those who do not work, who consume 
copiously, and produce nothing, they have no chance of 
normal development, add no step to human progress. 
See in conspicuous instance the Grecian marbles and 
literature. Those who gave the work were themselves 
developed by doing it; the society which received the 
work was developed by using it; and by the work as it 
remains to us, we know and judge Greece. But the pos- 
session of these works does not make us Greeks. 'To be 
able to do them was to be Greek. Many causes com- 
bined to make the Greek; and the Greek blossomed into 
that kind of work—he was, so to speak, merely Greek- 
ing in the doing of it. We have the result as we have 
fossil bones. From it we may learn what the Greek 
was, but not how to make him. 

A person, or a race, 27s something, owing to ante- 
tecedent conditions. Then they do something by virtue 


CHAPTER TWELVE 259 


of being what they are, as an apple tree bears apples. 
(“* By their fruits ye shall know them.”’) 

The thing done does have some reactive effect, how- 
ever—else we should have no power to modify each 
other, and this is one of humanity’s chief advantages. 
The modifying effect of the work accomplished is in- 
dead large, it is no wonder we so long to create the 
things whereby we can thus progressively serve each 
other. See, for instance, the endless effect upon so- 
ciety of such work as Plato’s, Angelo’s, Stevenson’s, 
Edison’s; all work counts in both ways; in the doing 
it affects the doer; when done it affects the user. 

But it is more blessed to give than to receive. In 
animals the modification of species is effected only in 
the direct line of heredity. A change of condition 
modifies his action—the change in action modifies him— 
and the modification is transmitted in his single line. 
But there is no means of widening the effect—it has to 
be filtered down through direct heredity. With man, in 
his organic connection, there is a race modification 
through our transmission of energy in work, which 
multiplies his progress million-fold. Some local change 
of condition modifies the action of one person, the 
change in action modifies him, and the modification is 
transmitted in his single line. Thus far we are even 
with the animals. Then we pass them; man’s action is 
work ; it is not mere putting something in his mouth; it 
is making something. And the thing made holds and 
transmits his energy, passing it on forever to all who 
use it, making the growth of one the growth of all. 


260 HUMAN WORK 


One man, or some few men, make a steam engine. 
They personally are by so much developed as makers, 
and their children after them. That is so much gain. 
But if we had waited for our inventors to modify the 
race through physical heredity, we should be still in 
the Bronze Age. The engine, being made, becomes part 
of the social structure, and proceeds to modify the so- 
ciety it serves. 

The bicycle is perhaps a better instance. The effect 
of the making is not materially different from the effect 
of making watches. But the thing made has modified 
society by the reactive effects of its use. It has modi- 
fied the dress, the activity, and so the physique and 
character of women, to their great improvement. It 
has modified roads—to the great material benefit of 
the regions affected. It has modified inn-keeping, livery- 
stabling, tailoring, the relative distance of residence— 
the effects of the bicycle on society are great, even upon 
the most superficial survey. But this is no reason why 
the maker of bicycles should be a better man than the 
maker of chronometers, or that either of them should — 
be paid more than the maker of pianos, or less than the 
maker of poems. 

The first effect of work, its result, return, or pay- 
ment, is to the maker in the quality and quantity of 
his effort. No one can measure his pay or deny it. 
The second is to the user in the fulness of his use. This, 
alas! can be measured and denied, and has been, to our 
racial injury. No tyranny was ever able to prevent 
the steady development of man through the work he 


CHAPTER TWELVE 261 


did. If he laboured faithfully and generously, he grew 
in the outputting of his strength, and his growth ulti- 
mately overthrew the tyranny. But tyranny of va- 
rious sorts has withheld from the workers the reactive 
benefits of using the product of their work; and so 
hindered race development. 

The builders of beautiful houses, working well, are 
necessarily benefited by their own working; but if they 
are forced to live in poor, ugly, unhealthy houses, they 
are not benefited by the results of the work. This is a 
grave limitation of a man’s income; and if his income 
is checked, his output is checked also. As an unwise 
farmer exhausts his soil in greedy harvesting without 
due fertilisation, so we have drawn upon the creative 
energies of humanity and denied the rich replenishment 
which would have made the product so much more 
prolific. 

Here the mischievous effect of our Want theory 
comes in plainly. The man who is working merely for 
pay must cater to the purchaser. He must please ex- 
isting tastes. Looking at his product, not as an end, to 
benefit society, but as a means to benefit himself, he 
must so produce as to secure a buyer. ‘This is the “ pot- 
boiler” again. The artist who paints to suit his 
patrons and get their money is not the true artist, and 
through him art does not grow. The maker of coats 
or hats or houses or dishes submits to this degrading 
pressure, and the result is seen in our debased and vul- 
gar forms of manufacture everywhere. 

The evil effects to the consumer are more manifest in 


262 HUMAN WORK 


some trades than in others, as, for instance, in the 
liquor trade. Here we have human beings producing 
what they know people will buy; and then, not content 
with the existing demand, using all possible means to 
excite and maintain a further demand—simply that 
they may make money. 

Again, in our degraded press, we have a most con- 
spicuous instance of this prostitution of a great social 
function to private ends. Under the mistaken idea 
that the distribution of news is a process for feeding 
owners of papers, and thus being led to arrange their 
news so as to please the most buyers, they rapidly de- 
scend along lines of least resistance to a wholesale 
catering to the worst tastes of the most people; 
and supplement that by elaborate efforts to foment 
and spread the low appetites they so obsequiously 
serve. 

Naturally there is no growth and grandeur in a 
trade like this. To spread knowledge, sympathy, in- 
stant information of the world’s movements good and 
bad, is to take part in one of society’s chief functions ; 
in the general nervous system of the world. But to 
ascertain that society enjoys certain sensations, and to 
force the general presentation of news into a special ar- 
rangement to give those desired sensations, is to turn 
healthy action into a loathsome disease. In any form 
of human production, the object is to serve the consumer 
by the best development of the product, not to use the 
consumer as a means of profit for the producer. The 
producer must, of course, be provided for; as must the 


CHAPTER TWELVE 263 


soldier, artist, physician; but self-interest is not the ob- 
ject of the work. 

In the production of shoes, again, the object should 
be a constant improvement in material, shape, wearing 
quality, and general utility and beauty. Deliberately to 
change the shape and size, the proportion and make of 
human footwear, merely to cater to low tastes, is the 
degrading “ pot-boiler ”; the prostituting of a social 
function to a private end. 

All forms of cheap and dishonest production, of 
adulteration, of an artificially forced market, are di- 
rectly traceable to our Want theory; to our per- 
sistent superstition which still crudely imagines this 
vast and intricate world of interservice to be a pri- 
meval forest, where beast and savage hunt for prey. 
The mistake in object degrades the product, and the 
degraded product degrades the man. Thus our im- 
mense field of production is not only checked in output 
and arrested in distribution, but weakened through and 
through by adulteration and bad workmanship; with 
evils in result, unending. The natural trend toward 
a wider, fuller, easier, and ever better production, 
accompanied at every step by growing pride and 
power and pleasure in the producer, is hindered and 
perverted to large degree by our prevalent economic 
fallacies. 

Another conspicuous point where our errors touch 
production is seen in the arts especially ; the particular 
mistake here being in the persistence of the ego concept ; 
our confusion of self-expression with social service. 


264 HUMAN WORK 
The social consciousness, unrecognised, presents itself to 
our minds as a huger self-consciousness. 

We have often wondered at the inordinate selfish- 
ness of man, compared to which the innocent egoism of 
the beasts is angelic. This tremendous range and depth 
of selfishness is because of that essential enlargement of 
self which comes with socialisation—the individual of a 
given society is that society—feels it as a “ self.” The 
Roman, to the limits of his capacity, is Rome. The so- 
cialised individual carries in him the enlargement of 
his society. He has a wider soul, perforce, that is our 
human quality. This larger self, a thing frankly es- 
sential to social existence, enabling the individual to 
so think, feel, and act with and for his society, comes 
into action long before it is recognised by the “ local 
office *—the mind of the individual. The mind has to 
learn its own contents as well as its outside environment. 
Our traditional labelling of those contents is no more 
correct than our primitive misconceptions of geography 
or physics. 

What we personally call a quality does not affect its 
nature, but does affect our own conscious behaviour. 
The ability we display to mistake and miscall our own 
qualities and those of other people, is apparently im- 
measurable. So we feel this social soul, this larger 
aliveness; a power of caring for millions, of wanting 
for millions, and of doing for millions; and, since we 
ourselves feel it in ourselves, we call it self-conscious 
ness. 

A man, joining a regiment of old and splendid fame, 


CHAPTER TWELVE 265 


comes to feel and act strongly from the regimental 
consciousness. He feels it with his own mental ma- 
chinery; but it is not an enlargement of his personal 
self-consciousness—that is forever limited to his per- 
sonality. This larger self—society, and its accompany- 
ing social consciousness—we calmly appropriate as a 
personal quality, and proceed to act on it. Having the 
capacity to think, feel, act for a thousand, we proceed 
to think, feel, and act a thousand times more for our- 
selves. Therefore we are naturally appalled at the 
limitlessness of ** human selfishness.” 

The whole mistake is natural enough—the conscious 
mind always lagging behind our unconscious growth; 
but to-day the social consciousness is finally forcing 
itself on the perception of the individual; and that 
which we have called selfishness, and which is really 
socialness misused, will be lifted from vice to virtue as 
we re-name it. Once properly recognised, we have quite 
ability enough to measure the man who uses a public 
power for a private end; to measure and condemn. 
But while this misconception still exists we have a minor 
confusion as to “ self-expression ” and “ social service.” 

The artist feels this more perhaps than other 
workers. He feels it because his feelings are more 
prominent, and more often handled, than those of the 
workman in the more mechanical trades. A man may 
make tremendous engines or run them; and never “ feel 
himself work ” so much as the maker of very incon- 
siderable poems. This is because the poet is so highly 
socialised a product. His power to be a poet is a 


266 HUMAN WORK 


social power. What he feels is the heart of his people, 
and he, poor man! thinks it is his own. He thinks 
his heart is far more exquisitely sensitive than theirs, 
whereas it is their hearts he is feeling! His capacity 
for pain and for pleasure is their capacity ; it is greater 
because he is more people, or at least is the specialised 
point of sensation and expression for more people. 

** Let me write the songs of a people and let who 
will make their laws.” 

The songs of a people—not his songs forced down 
upon them, but their songs forced up through him. 
“The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferred until 
his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has 
absorbed it.” 

Artists, of all men, are most exquisitely specialised 
to the social service. Their work, of all men’s, is least 
valuable to themselves, most valuable to others. They 
are absolutely for other people to so extreme a degree 
as nearly always to warp and injure their personal 
relations, even under the fairest conditions. They 
must do the work for which they are built, cost what it 
may, and this compelling power, this insistent force 
from within which will out through whatever medium 
is at hand, this they call ‘ self-expression”! An 
artist, they say, must not consider social service in the 
least; he must express himself. 

It is a true recognition of the kind of work he must 
do; he must indeed express that whick is good in him 
quite regardless of whether the people around him want 
it or not; will pay him for it or not; will kill him for 


CHAPTER TWELVE 267 


it or not. But that unfaltering expression is his social 
service, his true function, what he was built for. And 
it is not “ himself ” that he is expressing, it is ‘* them- 
self.” He is, of that people and that time, a voice, 
an eye, an ear, a hand to do. Holland made the Dutch 
painters, not they Holland. They in return in their 
accomplished work made Holland Hollander, so to 
speak, but the lives of many generations of Dutchmen 
and Dutchwomen went to form those painters first. 
There is no necessary conflict between the two con- 
ceptions of the artist’s duty—to express himself, or 
to serve society—as far as the special performance goes: 
‘but the misconception carries wide error and evil with 
it none the less. It makes the artist morbid in what he 
fancies a vast self-consciousness, whereas he might 
remain as free and unassuming personally as any child, 
once he recognised that it was not he who was doing 
all this, but they. It would save him too from the com- 
mon mistake of applying his splendid range of social 
sensitiveness to his own personal affairs as he too com- 
monly does. Had Carlyle, for instance, seen truly what 
was the nature of his place and power, he would have 
been less haughty and less irritable—also less lonely. 
The individual must needs suffer under the isolation 
of his strange overdevelopment, unless he is able to 
detach himself from it, and be a person among other 
persons freely. The power to separate the man from 
the office, to come down from the throne and play ball, 
is a healthy one. On the other hand, much true artis- 
tic service is lost to the world through this misconcep- 


268 HUMAN WORK 

tion about “ self-expression’ when the power is not 
overwhelmingly great, and the individuals are strong 
in their sense of duty as they see it. This is especially 
true among women. To such, the inner impulse demand- 
ing’ expression is considered “ selfish,” and a thing to 
resist ; and their energies are forced into other lines be- 
cause thereby they imagine they are best serving. If 
they recognised this inward propulsion as the call for 
social expression—not self’s—it would stand differ- 
ently in their scale of duty. 

A question rises here of large importance, and not 
easy of answer. Suppose the social expression actuat- 
ing the individual be a bad one—visibly a bad one—re- ' 
sultant from wrong conditions and tending to pro- 
mote others as wrong—should such a tendency be fol- 
lowed? Is that the social service? How far may the in- 
dividual judgment give check to such social tendency ? 

As, for instance, certain wrong economic conditions, 
say in France, before the Revolution, tended to produce 
many social phenomena, including a tendency to de- 
based literature and art. Should the artist, in such 
case, say to himself, “ Why, dear me! This is a vicious 
and reactionary social impulse. I am out-Heroding 
Herod—this stuff shows how bad we have been, and 
doesn’t help us to be any better. Now I will not in- 
dulge my inclination to paint these torture-chamber 
scenes, or these subtle indecencies. I like to—but what 
of that? It is a social tendency, but society is not al- 
ways right, she goes backward and sideways by spells; 
it will not do her any good to let out this stuff. No, 


CHAPTER TWELVE 269 
I'll choke it off, and, if I can’t paint better things, I'll 
take to pottery or weaving.” 

Whether this is best, or whether it is the artist’s duty 
humbly to voice that which is in him—saying, “ Well, 
this is the way you feel, is it? Better let it out then. 
Perhaps you’ll change quicker if you see your badness,” 
this is a very large question. 

Perhaps the truly morbid and vicious tendencies, thus 
recognised by the artist, would cause him as much shame 
as if he had unfortunately inherited some scrofulous 
disease, and he would be unable to proceed. This, at 
least, should be held steadily in mind, that human work 
is not mere expression, of self or of society, but is 
transmission, and therefore to be watched. 

If speech were merely a relief to one’s own feelings, 
poured forth into empty air and earless waste places, 
then foulness and profanity would be merely indications 
of how the speaker felt, and hurt no one. But where 
speech goes to other ears, it must be measured, not 
merely by the speaker’s emotions, but by theirs. So the 
artist is not merely an unconscious spring bubbling over 
with fair water, or foul, according to its hidden sources, 
but is a conduit, taking the water to something as well 
as from something. And as a conscious intelligence 
bound to act “ up to his lights,” if he judges the water 
to be bad in its effects, he has no right to convey it to 
others. This would leave an easy alternative to the 
artist. Let him, if he must, write his decadent litera- 
ture, paint his decadent pictures ; and then, having so re- 
lieved himself of these foul secretions, let him decently 


270 HUMAN WORK 


destroy the product, lest it prove contagious. Some 
friend, having seen, would say compassionately—* Poor 
Jones! He has to write about so much of it in a year— 
he cannot help it, it is better to come out, I suppose. 
But don’t look as if you knew—he is very sensitive 
about it.” 

In a more advanced civilisation we may have Public 
Health ordinances as to these expressions, like the signs 
in our street cars. “The assumption of the artist that 
his form of production is beyond all social responsi- 
bility or control, that ‘‘ there is no ethics in art,” is a 
very interesting instance of the eg? concept at its most 
insane height. 

If ever there was a “ social function,” it is art. As 
a civilisation advances, there is more and more develop- 
ment of art; as we look back along the path of social 
progress, there is less and less of it. In its inception it 
was more or less common to all workers, a little of it; 
as it grew, it demanded more wholly the work of a 
whole life. No ultra-specialised social servant is more 
removed from self-support than the artist, whose work 
is of no faintest possible use to him as an individual. 
He must absolutely depend on the advanced society 
which made him, which feeds, clothes, shelters, and de- 
fends him, and whose highest needs it is his duty to 
serve. 

Higher than kings or captains, higher even than the 
giant producers and distributers of wealth, comes this 
delicate, sensitive, exquisitely specialised organ of so- 
ciety. For true service he deserves all the love and 


CHAPTER TWELVE 271 


honour society can give, as well as the support due all 
of us—nothing can overestimate his value. For true 
service,—but what service does he give? 

The more highly developed the organ, the more open 
to disease. No feature in human production is marked 
with worse depravity than is found in art. Because of 
the extreme pleasure found in the transmission of his pe- 
culiar power, because of the special sensitiveness involved 
in his form of service, we too often find the artist sunken 
in a sublimated selfishness and arrogant to a degree 
beyond comparison. It is as though an eye should 
plume itself loftily on its power of sight. ‘* You poor, 
blind body! You cannot see, but I can! I only can see, 
and I like to see. It gives me pleasure. I will see only 
what gives me pleasure. It is my pleasure to see things 
pink—all things pink. And round—all things are 
round.” ‘The poor blind body cannot deny that things 
are pink—if the eyes say so; but it has hands at least, 
to tell it that some things are flat and others sharp; so 
it works on, sadly misled by its servant. 

And if we reason with the servant, saying: “‘ Are you 
so sure that things are pink? It does not seem reason- 
able—it does not seem right,”—the servant, loftily and 
unapproachably replies: “ The Eye does not reason! 
There is no right or wrong to the Eye! I am an Eye, 
and I see as I like. If you differ with me, go blind! ” 

When we recognise production as a social process, for 
the social good, all work will change its standard of 
measurement. The worker, artist or scientist, in- 
ventor or teacher, must often differ with the purchas- 


QTR HUMAN WORK 


ing public; must modify his work by his own reason and 
conscience, not by that of the other people; but the pur- 
pose to which he modifies it is social service. It may cost 
him his life at the time; he may have to set himself and 
his views against those of the past and present; but he 
should do so with unfaltering devotion to what he be- 
lieves the social good; not in this lunatic position that 
he and his work are unique in the universe—that he 
owes no responsibility to anything—that “ art is for 
art’s sake.” 

When we are alive to the nature of our social proc- 
esses, when we see that production is both duty and 
pleasure, personal good and social advantage, we 
shall bend our tremendous powers to develop and edu- 
cate the productive energy in all our children, and pro- 
vide the best conditions for its free exercise. 


ea ees TRB UT T ON 
Summary 


Distribution the field of most social disorders. Ad- 
vantages of Distribution. Physical Avenues of Distri- 
bution. Mechanical means of Distribution. Social 
nourishment flowing around the world. Evils of local 
production and consumption. Social wmstincts de- 
veloped by common interests. Love rests on service. 
International dependence means mternational peace. 
Long circuit, wide base, gives room for larger develop- 
ment. Present system of Distribution does not properly 
supply the world. Mysterious coagulations. False 
concepts again. Ego concept. Want theory. Work- 
ing and eating, which comes first? Parent not compe- 
tent to provide for child in society. Social parentage. 
Public education. Making and taking. How to supply 
social energy. Pay concept. Patent failure in appli- 
cation. Selling kerosene as a social service. No true 
relation between work and pay. Pay idea wrong. 
Nourishment first, work after. Heirlooms in our heads. 
The Bear. Competition and survival not useful among 
our vital organs. Our improvement mutual, collective, 
organic. How to raise the productive value of society. 
No ratio between want and work. Reductio ad ab- 
surdum of Want theory. Not “ pay,” but investment. 
A man’s work is his payment to society for value re- 
ceed. Slave labour could not conceive of wage labour; 
wage labour fails to conceive of free labour. The 
normal ‘‘ incentive’ is pressure of social energy. See 
effect of false concepts on distribution of wheat. How 
it should be. Real “ business sense” for society. 


XIII 
DES TRIBUTION 


WueEn we come to the subject of Distribution, we are 
facing what may be called the main field of our social 
disorders. Under this head, and that of the next chap- 
ter, Consumption, come all questions of property rights, 
with the vast structures of the civil law ensuing; the 
whole money question—laboriously complex; the de- 
mands of the labour movement; the protests of the 
“leisure class”—we are on the great battlefield of 
modern thought. 

Let us approach it simply and naturally along the 
lines laid down in preceding chapters. 

Distribution is a natural corollary of production. 
Society produces through its individual members in 
ever-growing surplus, and must distribute that surplus 
among its members to the best social advantage. What 
that advantage is needs no abstruse exposition; it is 
simply to have all the members of society supplied with 
what they need in order that they may so continue to 
serve society. 

As social functions develop, the rate of production in- 
creases, as well as the relative distance of the con- 
sumers; and with them increases the necessity for an 
ever wider, swifter, and easier distribution of product. 
The circulation of our social supplies is as essential to 

275 


276 HUMAN WORK 


social growth as the circulation of blood is to the 
growth of the body. ‘This is seen plainly in the course 
of history. In the earliest times the young civilisations 
depend on great waterways for their life and prosperity 
as the easiest means of transportation ; and water trans- 
portation remains one of our most important avenues 
of distribution. But seacoast and river bank were not 
enough for us, land transportation must develop too, 
and it has done so, wonderfully. 

At first the mother-of-all-industries, the savage 
woman, was the only beast of burden. Then stronger 
animals were pressed into the service, and reached their 
height of usefulness in the age of caravan traffic. The 
drag, the sled, and final triumph—the wheel, were in- 
vented, and the world rolled on more and more swiftly. 
With the wheel grew the road, and civilisation leaped 
forward. The road became a railroad, tireless mechani- 
cal forces superseded the quadruped, and the distribu- 
tion of social products to-day is truly marvellous. 

The goods of the round world are gathered into local 
distributing centres, carried across continent and ocean, 
and scattered in tiny parcels to the millions upon mil- 
lions of remote consumers. Each section contributes its 
particular wealth. The ice goes south, the oranges go 
north, the coffee goes west, the tobacco goes east, the 
manufactures go everywhere. 

If we could watch a little globe in action and see the 
coal pouring slowly up out of little holes, and flowing 
off in black streaks across land and sea; the oil going 
with it, but farther and faster; the wheat yellowing 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN Q77 


whole provinces, heaped up in golden mountains, carried 
off in thick yellow streams in train-loads and _ ship- 
loads; the gloves of France on the hands of Americans, 
the tools of Americans in the hands of Russians; the 
whole flux and swing of our social circulation wherein 
one man’s life is fed and strengthened by the fruit of 
thousands of far-born foreigners,—if we could get this 
clearly in mind, the organic relation of society would be 
plainer. 

On what line of race-advantage has this tremendous 
evolution come to pass? Why distribute so widely? 
Why is it not better to produce and consume locally, 
each man for himself, as Tolstoi would have us? 

The advantage is easily demonstrated if we accept 
the working plan of organic evolution. If the develop- 
ment of Society is in the universal line of march; if it is, 
if not an “ object,” at least an observed tendency, for 
the loose scarce-human proto-social stuff to move on 
steadily toward an always-increasing degree of common 
intelligence, common activity, common enjoyment, com- 
mon peace, and power, and love,—then every process 
which promotes this movement is advantageous. 

Since the development of a society requires common 
service, and that common service requires for its wise 
direction a common consciousness, therefore every modi- 
fication of human activity which develops common con- 
sciousness is advantageous. Since the line of advance 
in socialisation is from a state of self-supporting indi- 
vidualism toward a state of collectively supporting so- 
cialism, therefore every extension of our economic proc- 


278 HUMAN WORK 


esses along that line is advantageous. Self-support de- 
velops only egoism. Mutual support develops mutu- 
alism. The more general the base of our maintenance, 
the more general our advance toward omniism—toward 
that degree of common consciousness which shall best 
protect, supply, and develop everyone. | 
When each man took care of himself, he had no in- 
terest in, or love for his neighbour; when their small 
‘spheres of influence ” touched, there was a combat. 
In such conditions no Society was possible. When small 
communities or large are self-supporting, they have no 
interest in, or love for each other; this stage of develop- 
ment is the stage of war. Their “ spheres of influence ” 
touch, and there is combat. When the economic proc- 
esses of the world are in commcn—and they are already 
beginning to be so—we have the sure basis for common 
consciousness, for international peace, and all high de- 
velopment; only hindered by the preserved ghosts of 
previous national, local, and personal “ states of mind.” 
That mutual love which Tolstoi and his kind would 
see established depends primarily on the widest exten- 
sion of our common interest, the widest distribution of 
our specialised production. The law of organic ad- 
vantage in such relation is clear. Self-support is a 
very short range of life. Any trifling accident may 
break the circuit, and the individual is.lost. The wider 
the circuit of distribution the safer the component in- 
dividual. With the universal insurance of Society’s 
whole working bast, there is the largest wealth possible; 
the largest safety, the smallest risk from any source. 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 279 


There is also, still more importantly, a gain in de- 
velopment. 

In a large well-running organism there is room for 
rest, for the accumulating of energy to apply to special 
needs. Too prolonged disuse will ultimately eliminate 
the neglected part, to be sure; but for the time being, a 
well-organised society can support in idleness those 
whose service is no less valuable for being intermittent 
and irregular. The basic “ vital organs ” work all the 


time. The later “ special organs ” 
b] 


not only may but 
must rest. Our “ special senses,” our delicate nervous 
system, the dominating brain, are easily injured by use 
which is perfectly normal to heart or lung. By wide 
distribution society is enabled to support all its parts, 
whether active or passive, and so preserve a greater sum 
of usefulness. We approximate the same idea in any 
mutual benefit or insurance society. 

It is to broaden the base of supplies and extend the 
time of payment—a sort of physical credit system. A 
society where the widest possible range of produc- 
tivity is maintained, with the largest margin for emer- 
gencies, is richer and stronger than one which has “ all 
its eggs in one basket.” So the underlying laws of 
social advantage have worked upon the human race, de- 
veloping transportation facilities, physical, mechanical, 
and psychical (meaning here those purely mental agree- 
ments and hypotheses by which we facilitate commerce), 
until we have a system of distribution which would seem, 
at first sight, quite equal to the needs of the world. 

But well we know that it is not! Bitterly and deeply 


280 HUMAN WORK 


we know that it is not. Some malign force is working at 
cross-purposes to clog and check and divert this social 
circulation, and produce the morbid conditions we know 
so well—the congestion of supplies in some quarters, 
with the ensuing train of social diseases, and the lack 
of supplies in other quarters, with another train of dis- 
eases consequent. 3 

If there is one conspicuous fact in social economics, 
it is this peculiar perversion of our distribution system. 
Those streams of coal and wheat and oil are myste- 
riously checked at various points, they accumulate 
where they are not wanted, they filter, slow and scant, in 
insufficient driblets where there is most need. ‘They are 
violently pumped out in sudden jerks, they sullenly re- 
treat and coagulate for long, slow periods. What is it 
that ails our all-important processes of distribution? 
Merely the human mind. Only our _ superstitions. 
Simply the action of false concepts upon conduct again, 
our old enemies, the Ego concept and the Want theory, 
gaining headway in these vast currents of modern in- 
dustry, and doing in large conspicuous ways the same 
evil they always did, less visibly. From the very begin- 
ning, the men through whom these great processes must 
needs be carried on, have been labouring under a delu- 
sion. ‘They supposed that all this commerce and ex- 
change was due to their individual exertions, and that 
the purpose of it all was to pay them. Better proof of 
the elastic capacity of the human brain could hardly be 
asked. 

That a man carrying a pack on his back should say, 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 281 


“T do it,” is natural; that he should still say, “‘ I do 
_it,”? when he puts the pack upon a mule and drives the 
beast unwillingly along, is still natural. But that this 
**T ” should swell and swell from mule train to train of 
cars, from canoe to Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, is 
marvellous. Now that such a myriad “ we” do all this 
work for such a myriad “ us,” it would seem as if the 
various component “ I’s”’ might have been lost in the 
shuffle before now. Not a bit. 

Acting under the Ego concept, with a sense of jus- 
tice and of ownership dating from the Ego period, we 
have arduously bent our minds to the development of a 
system of laws more elaborately ramified than the twigs 
of a tree; to follow and preserve the individual rights 
along every broadening branch of social growth. Gov- 
erned by the Want theory and its derivatives, we have 
planted an arbitrary system of inter-individual ex- 
change, like a set of interlocking toll-gates, along every 
inch of these great roads of progress. 

Let us analyse again this group of allied errors, the 
Want theory. ‘‘ Work is an expenditure of energy 
by an individual man whereby to obtain something for 
the gratification of his wants.” This rests on the as- 
sumption that what the man needs to gratify his wants 
is to be had only by his working. As we know that he 
does not himself manufacture the articles needed to 
gratify his wants, but that these articles all and several 
are made by other people; we assume further that each 
man owns what he makes, and will not give it up to 
another without value received—“ If a man will not 


282 HUMAN WORK 


work, neither shall he eat.” And as the supplies of the 
world are assumed to belong to the existing inhabitants 
in private ownership, each newcomer, unless inheriting 
a share in the privately owned world, is expected to 
*“‘ work ” before he receives anything. 

Confronted by the glaring fact that a new human 
creature cannot work before he receives anything, but 
must be supplied with many social products for many 
years before he can produce in return, we then fall back 
on the parent and say, “‘ the new human being shall 
receive nothing from Society except so much as his 


99 


father is able to earn,” i. e., pay for in work. That 
system of supplying the young by the unaided activities 
of the parent, which we find among animals, we assume 
to be the best for the human race, and so the final dis- 
tribution of social products is filtered through, not the 
consuming capacity, but the “ earning” capacity of 
individuals. 

If the man with ten children is but a low-grade work- 
man, his earning capacity being but $1.50 a day at our 
rating, his children receive from Society less than fif- 
teen cents’ worth of supplies each. Their consuming 
capacity is naturally much greater, but under our as- 
sumption that the father represents the family as an 
economic unit, and that the family shall be restricted 
in consumption within his power of production, the 
children are thus supplied with the equivalent of one- 
tenth an individual’s output. 

In some ways we have recognised the mischievous 


results of this method of distribution, and have begun 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 283 


to supply some of the necessities of life on a wiser 
plan, as in our system of public education, where we 
frankly reverse the position. We therein say: ‘ Chil- 
dren are members of Society. The maintenance and 
progress of Society require that its members be edu- 
cated to some degree. ‘This degree of common educa- 
tion the individual earning power of the parent cannot 
provide, but the collective funds of the community can.” 
So we publicly distribute education, and even enforce 
it—or try to—on the clear ground that the output of 
the future citizen depends on his income in youth, and 
that Society cannot afford to leave that income to be 
measured by a fraction of a low-grade worker’s output. 
Some strictly logical and scientific-minded thinkers do 
indeed object to this free public education, maintaining 
that since effort is only made to satisfy wants, there- 
fore, if you satisfy any of man’s wants, you decrease 
by so much his efforts, you lower the output of Society. 
The advocates of free public education, though still 
clinging to their idols in other departments of life, 
maintain that education is a different matter, and point 
with honest pride to the results, showing that a publicly 
educated community does produce more and behave 
better than one wherein each man must provide as he 
can for his children. But in spite of this patent proof 
they still refuse to fairly admit the new principle in- 
volved, and to fairly give up their fallacious old one. 
The Want theory assumes that a man has a supply 
of energy which he may or may not discharge, but that 
he will not discharge it unless forced to by necessity. 


284 HUMAN WORK 


If you supply his needs he will discharge no energy 
whatever, he will not work. ‘This does apply, fairly 
enough, to an animal’s effort to take things, but does 
not apply to man’s effort to make things. The fact is 
that a man has energy according to (a) his physical 
well-being, and (b) his access to social stimulus; and 
that, having it, he must discharge it or suffer in the 
forced retention. The practical question before exist- 
ing Society is how to supply the most energy to its 
members and direct it to the most use. ; 

In free education we do supply the young social 
factor with both energy and direction, so that he grows 
up better able to work and to work rightly than if left 
‘to the degrading influence of this pitiful theory, that 
the way to make a man work is not to give him anything 
until he does. 

The real process of distribution is to circulate our 
stores of social nourishment as widely and freely as 
possible, that we may be always more and more able to 
work. We are quite consistent in this Pay theory of 
ours. We carry it out even in regulating the amount 
of our payment. We hold that not only shall a man 
have nothing unless he works, but that he shall in no 
case have more than the equivalent of his work, that 
no person shall receive anything unless he has “ earned ” 
it, given a full equivalent. We are forced to admit 
that in the life about us this principle is a conspicuous 
failure; we see those who work the most getting the 
least ; we see those who have the most working the least ; 
and we seek to explain this anomaly by a modification 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 285 


of the Pay concept to this effect: that a man should 
be paid not only in regard to the amount, but to the 
value of his work. 

With this idea we thought we had reached the height 
of justice, yet we are forced to admit that this does 
not serve, either: that the men who do the most valuable 
work for Society are precisely those least paid, some- 
times most punished, and that the men receiving the 
largest rewards are often the most ordinary func- 
tionaries and sometimes rascals. Does anyone presume 
to claim that selling kerosene oil is so precious a service 
to Society that the head pedlar should have more money 
than anybody on earth? Is the maker of steel rails or 
huge cannon a nobler servant than the maker of bread 
or the teacher of children? All these are forms of 
social service truly, but are they fairly paid? The 
facts do not bear out our theory at all, and we only 
attribute it to other malign influences, never dreaming 
that our basic idea is wrong. In sociological law there 
is no relation whatever, either in amount or quality, 
between normal human work and any possible “* pay,” 
any more than there is between the work of an eye and a 
leg and the amount of blood they get. Normal human 
work is organic action. It is a result of previous good 
received, not an effort to obtain goods withheld. 

That under the system of slave labour-a man will 
work under fear of pain is true. That under the sys- 
tem of wage labour a man will work under hope of a 
reward is true. But both these systems are transient, 
superficial, soon outgrown by any live society; neither 


286 HUMAN WORK 


of them affects in the least the underlying organic law 
of human work. Our conscious minds have not kept 
pace with social growth. We are trying to administer 
the processes of an advanced society on lines of pre- 
social theories. If anyone seeks to point out these 
great sociological facts, we cry, ‘“‘ These are Utopian 
dreams, millennial visions; you are a thousand years 
ahead of your times!” 

Whereas it is we—we, the general public, with all 
these hereditary heirlooms in our heads in place of 
facts—that are ten thousand years behind them! We 
try to explain and assist the highly developed and abso- 
lutely interdependent social processes by arguments 
from a long-outgrown era of individualism. ‘Theories 
of individual effort, incentive, reward, competition, 
and “survival of the fittest,” we apply to our own 
organic functions. If they do not fit, so much the 
worse for the functions! 

If we were individuals, like the beasts, it would all 
hang together well enough, thus: Here is a Bear. 
His business is the same old series, maintenance, repro- 
duction, and improvement; to be, to re-be, and to be 
better. All of these ends he serves by the exercise of 
his own personal abilities. These abilities, being purely 
personal, are only called into exercise by personal wants 
or impulses. If the Bear found his food on a plate 
before his cave every day he would indeed suffer from 
fatty degeneration; his powers would decay, he would 
become less and less Bear because he did less and less 
Bear-ing. | 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 287 


And conversely, if suitable difficulties (not too great) 
intervene between him and his food, he develops the 
faculties to meet the difficulties, and improves. If he 
is not a smart or strong Bear, and cannot get much 
for himself and the little Bears, why, let them die; 
better Bears will survive them, and the race improve 
by their absence. If too much survival of the fittest 
left too much food for the survivors, so that they be- 
came less fit, why up would pop others less fit also to 
compete for the food, and thus a beautiful level of 
Bearishness is maintained. This method of evolution 
we see plainly and admire, perhaps unduly, as a “ nat- 
ural law.” All laws are natural. If not natural—they 
are not laws; we only thought they were. 

The essential difference between us and the Bears is 
in our organic relation. 'The Bears have no common 
interests, common functions, common good; we have. 
A perfect balance of highly superior Humans, muscular 
and ferocious, with just food supply enough to keep 
up the fighting, and just fighting enough to keep down 
the food supply, is scarcely a social ideal. The social 
organism alters the matter completely. The human 
race improves through production and exchange of 
products—Work. The work of the human race im- 
proves under laws of organic evolution, of increasing 
specialisation and interdependence. As society ad- 
vances a man profits less and less by what he does for 
himself, more and more by what others do for him. 

The improvement of a human being is not in his own 
hands, but in the hands of other human beings. Our 


288 HUMAN WORK 


line of racial advance is in serving one another, like any 
other group of organs. This common profit in a com- 
mon product leads us to wish to improve that product. 
The product of human beings is improved by supplying 
the needed energy, stimulus, direction; by putting into 
the individual in order that we may get out of him the 
pay first, the work afterwards. 

~~ 'This reverses the whole proposition. It is no longer 
a matter of the individual workman seeking to satisfy 
his wants @ la Bear. It is Society seeking to raise the 
productive value of its integers by carefully supplying 
those forces which produce more and better work. 
Quite without knowing it Society does this to a consid- 
erable extent, hence the working value of a member of 
an advanced society is greater than that of a member 
of a low society; but because we have not known the 
real laws of human production, we have continued to 
interpret the whole field of social activity in terms of 
individual competition. 

The supply of a man’s needs we have tried to limit 
strictly to his earning power, refusing to observe that 
there was no ratio whatever between what a man needs 
and what he can do—unless, indeed, an inverse one. 
The fact that a man, well started in lines of work suited 
to him, will produce continuously long after all his 
needs are supplied we have tried to account for by 
assuming new needs as the necessary incentives. Noth- 
ing could be clearer—to our view. If a man works 
only in order to supply his needs, then a given man 
who does work worth a thousand times as much as 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 289 


another man’s must of course need a thousand times 
as much. He must, because there is no other reason 
for his working. And if the working power of the 
average man shows large and general increase, it is 
only to be accounted for by shining ranks of hitherto 
undreamed-of needs, which were evolved to lead him on! 

So the missionary, acting on this theory, tries to 
rouse the contented savage to want things, holding that 
attitude to be a productive one; and the economist, 
satisfied with his theory, never looks to see if there is 
any observable connection between want and work, in 
race, class, or individual. In reductio ad absurdum the 
Want theory comes to this. Man works to supply 
wants. ’As the act of working does not supply wants, 
this involves another clause; man works to get wealth 
to supply wants. And this, if a real law of nature, 
involves some inevitable connection between the clauses: 
work must produce wealth and wealth must supply 
want. Also, if a real law, there must be some propor- 
tion between these clauses, the less the want the less the 
work, the greater the want the greater the work, with 
the same proportion in the “ wealth ” which is the inter- 
mediate factor understood. 

This would make the proposition: A given amount 
of want urges to an equal amount of work which secures 
the desired wealth; or, Want equals Work and Work 
equals Wealth. 

If this be so we shall find in society those who want 
the most do the most work, and those who do the most 
work have the most wealth. Poverty would be a healthy 


290 HUMAN WORK 


state, inevitably developing into wealth. Is this the 
fact? Hardly. What is the fact? This: that man 
does the most work who is best able to do it, and likes 
it most. 

The way to make people work is to make them able 
and willing, strong, skilful, ambitious, enthusiastic. 
When we wish to develop horses to work more and better 
than previous horses, we do not seek to attain that end 
by cutting off their oats. The power to work comes 
from the energy already supplied, not the hypothetic 
energy of a future reward. 

The “ pay ” comes first; not as payment, but as in- 
vestment. A man’s work is his payment to Society for 
value received, and he has to receive it before’ he can 
return it. The conscious attitude of the worker should 
be that of gratitude, of a proud and lavish return for 
the rich supply received from infancy; his unconscious 
attitude one of irresistible pressure, discharge of 
energy. Each of us owes the world our best, because 
to it we are indebted for all we are and have. In per- 
sonal intercourse we all know the difference between 
services done for love, or from a sense of honourable © 
obligation, and services done merely for pay. We 
know the dignity and honour of the first attitude, the 
meanness of the second. And yet we prefer to have the 
whole world’s vital processes degraded and minimised 
to the level of that hireling service, rather than elevated 
and multiplied as the limitless outpouring of richly 
developed members of society. 

To which the Want theorist replies: * It is not what 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 291 


we prefer, but what is,” to which again I answer—It 
is not. The facts of sociology do not bear out the 
Want theory. The true place of that theory is in the 
stage next to primitive slavery. The first compulsion 
to co-ordinate effort was force and fear and pain. 
Only the slave in danger of death could be made to 
work. The next compulsion to the still unsocialised 
ego was that of hireling self-restraint, of withheld 
food. Observe that this is a purely arbitrary and 
social condition, involving the ownership of that food 
by someone else. Primitive man ate without working 
for many thousands of years, and does yet in many a 
favoured isle. 

He simply picks his food off trees, or hunts and fishes 
for it, even fights for it. But he does not work for it 
at that stage of social evolution, much preferring 
starvation. Later on, being no longer a free agent, 
the food being forcibly detained until he worked, why, 
work he did, under the action of such pressure as he 
could then feel. In that period of evolution when only 
cruel slavery made men work, the thought that they 
would ever work in the comparative freedom of the con- 
tract system would have been scouted as wildly visionary 
and Utopian. We can see something of this among 
our own freedmen, members of a much earlier social 
status, forcibly incorporated with our advanced body 
and failing to respond at once to the same stimuli. 

Under compulsion they worked. Free, and under no 
compulsicn save self-interest, they do not work as in- 
dustriously as further advanced races. This does not 


292 HUMAN WORK 


prove that self-interest is less powerful than compul- 
sion, or that slave labour is better than wage labour, 
but merely that the negro race is less socialised than 
the Anglo-Saxon. And we, in order to aid in his social 
development, are learning to supply him with the social 
stimuli he needs. Wage labour was a useful stage in 
economic evolution, just as slave labour was, but the | 
incentive of self-interest is no more final than that of 
compulsion. . 

A man will work if you make him, but also, being 
further developed, he will work if you do not make him, 
but merely pay him. A man will work if you pay him, 
but also, being further developed, he will work if you do 
not pay him; that is, if he is not “ paid” individually, 
through personal advantage, but collectively, through 
social advantage. We must remember that in the way 
of relating effort to result coliective man must “ work 
for his living” as actually as individual. But it is 
their living which they work for; the effort and the 
result are in common, and to the individual is supplied 
the great organic energy to work with. The normal 
goal to labour for, in a highly socialised race, is the 
common interest, a far stronger attraction than the 
personal interest. 

See how our misbeliefs affect the course of a single 
industrial process. Here is the wheat crop, for instance, 
one of the world’s most important products. The 
human race, collectively, produces an enormous amount 
of wheat. The same number of workers, without the 
support of a large organised society, could not produce 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 293 


that crop, or in any way distribute it. This amount 
of wheat, produced collectively, is for our collective 
consumption. ‘The individual producer raises a large 
surplus beyond his own needs for the social needs. The 
line of economic advantage is plain: To produce the 
most wheat with the least expense of social energy, and 
to distribute the most wheat with the least expense of 
social energy to the largest number of consumers. The 
social advantage lies in the food-value of the wheat, in 
the ensuing increase in the productivity of the race. 

Now see how our wrong ideas work against this ad- 
vantage. The individual producer, shutting his eyes 
to the collectivity of the process, considers that he 
** owns ” the wheat, and that he “ raised it himself.’’ 
Therefore, instead of facilitating its distribution with 
the least expense of social energy, he seeks to obstruct 
it by demanding as much social energy as he can get,— 
i. é., the price,—the first step in the exchange. Of 
course, being largely isolated, he does not succeed in 
getting much, and, equally of course, he is at present 
not supplied with his fair share of social energy before- 
hand; but admitting these facts, it remains true that 
his mental attitude is the same as that of the larger 
dealer: he looks on the world’s wheat as a source of 
profit to him to any extent that he can reach. 

Then come the great army of transporters. Thanks 
to the high organisation of this social function, the 
distribution of the wheat goes on with great facility 
and dispatch as far as mechanical convenience is con- 
cerned, and, by the concentration of the business in a 


294 HUMAN WORK 
few hands, much of the dribbling man-to-man subtrac- 
tion is saved; but alas—the little subtractions of many 
small private carriers are only exchanged for the enor- 
mous subtractions of the few great public carriers. 
Even at this extremely developed stage of evolution 
in the social process, even in a business so public as to 
require public grants of land and privilege, and des- 


‘*a common carrier,” in the very face of 


ignated as 
these flaring facts, this weird survival of a remote past, 
this prehistoric Ego, with its Want theory, sits gob- 
bling in the stream of social distribution, like some 
dinotherium mysteriously preserved to do mischief. 
This Common Carrier, managed by a few men, seriously 
believes the distribution of the world’s wheat to be in- 
tended for the private aggrandisement of the Carrier, 
and sucks from that life-giving stream as large a 
supply of racial nourishment as “ the traffic will bear ” 
—sometimes more! Of course the Carrier must be pro- 
vided with his share of social nutrition in order that he 
may carry, but why he should claim this vastly dispro- 
portionate amount is not so clear. It is not clear, that 
is, in the light of social laws to-day, but it is clear 
enough as a logical deduction from the antique premisses 
so devoutly believed in. 

The stream of wheat, robbed of much of its value, 
pours on and reaches the final stationary points of 
distribution, and there again the dealers, wholesale and 
retail, imagine that this mass of food was brought 
across the world for their benefit, and. proceed to ex- 
tract from it as much as they are able. Thus the food 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 295 


reaches fewer people in smaller quantities, and those 
who get it are obliged to give back a laige proportion 
of its nourishing power in payment. The circulation 
of the world is very seriously interfered with by this 
morbid action. 

Conceive now for a moment of wheat as a means of 
promoting the social good. Of a Bureau of Agricul- 
ture carefully posting from year to year the amount 
needed in different localities. Of a Bureau of Trans- 
portation carefully arranging from year to year for 
the most prompt and easy transfer to those localities. 
And of a Bureau of Local Distribution seeing to it that 
the wheat was as promptly and easily spread among the 
consumers. 

That would mean the greatest gain and the least 
waste and expense. That would be business sense on 
the part of the world. To reduce the outlay of effort 
and increase the income of nourishment, with a com- 
mensurate increase in social productivity,—that is the 
line of economic advantage for the Society of our 
time, as it was in the physical economy of the Individual 
of the Paleolithic Past. 

But this Paleolithic Individual with his pre-Paleo- 
lithic ideas is a great nuisance to-day. 


helve: “CONS UMP TION’ (5) 
Summary 


Previous propositions. Alleged selfishness. Social in- 
stincts as natural as individual. Root error on Con- 
sumption shown in Heaven, Utopia, etc. Honour im 
acting. Contentment theory. Limit of happiness in 
getting, limited; in doing, unlimited. Pleasure in eating, 
result of idea. Effect of this concept on Society. Im- 
pression merely incentive to expression. Transmitters, 
not vats. Collecting mania. Nature of ownership. 
Right of property. Social relations psychic. Mov- 
able rights. Law of property rights. Consumption 
means to production. Consumption must precede pro- 
duction. Natural limits of Consumption. Cause of 
excesses. Ill effect of morbid Consumption on pro- 
ducer. Must produce more than consume. Ten houses. 
List of propositions. Existing economic concepts. In- 
fluence of position of women. Women natural pro- 
ducers. Men natural destroyers. Men have monopolised 
production. Women made purely consumers. Women’s 
powers, confined to family, breed selfishness. Gen- 
erosity bred outside home. Feminine consumption be- 
come morbid. Vampire. Parasite. Hired matrimony. 
Woman as excessive consumer cause of “ Society.” 
A disease not. a “function.” “Society columns,” 
medical bullets. Effect on consumption. 


XIV 
CONSUMPTION (TI) 


We have laid down certain propositions in the pre- 
ceding chapters, namely, that men are part of a great 
Social Organism; that as parts of it they are continually 
supplied with its stimulus and nourishment; that as 
parts of it so nourished and so stimulated, they must 
discharge the swelling current of social energy in social 
action, which is Work; and that the business of a con- 
scious and intelligent Society is so to produce and dis- 
tribute social wealth as to maintain and increase this 
flood of energy, the discharge of which in our highly 
specialised industries is supreme delight. Against these 
propositions will be at once erected that common bul- 
wark of ancient superstition, man’s selfishness. We 
generally believe, and as generally act on the belief, that 
the individual selfishness of man is such that nothing 
would induce him to act for the good of society, even 
though that good plainly included himself. 

This theory of our selfishness is not borne out either 
by the scientific facts of our sociological position or 
the everyday facts of life about us. 

The theory dates from a time when men were still 
mainly individual animals, when it was true. Being 
imbedded in that heavy, slow-going, ancient brain, and 
hammered in by each subsequent generation, it has re- 

299 


300 HUMAN WORK 


mained with us until to-day. What we need to realise 
is that social development has brought with it other 
feelings, quite the opposite of selfishness, but equally 
natural, which are found in us all in varying degree; 
which we see at work about us, and yet which we refuse 
to admit into our “‘ minds ” as facts. On the contrary, 
we sturdily maintain in our minds the false ideas and 
act upon them, working much evil thereby. 

The organic connection of human beings develops 
among them those social instincts which are necessary 
to promote their common good, a class which we, seeing 
their pre-eminent value, have classed as “ virtues,” call- 
ing the disproportionate action of more primitive indi- 
vidual instincts ‘ vices.” Neither term is true. Ego- 
ism was a virtue in the individual status; altruism, or 
rather, omniism, is a virtue in the social status; both 
are natural. Our misinterpretation and false naming 
have prevented our easy assumption of the new qualities, 
that is all, the past concept being more potent to our 
minds than the present fact. 

Among the group of root errors still retarding our 
development, none is more mischievous than that wherein 
we assume pleasure to lie mainly in impression rather 
than expression. We believe that what we get makes 
us happy rather than what we do, and therefore con- 
sider our doing as a means of getting. Perhaps this 
idea antedates even the Want theory; but it is need- 
less to grope too critically among the errors of the 
remote past, they are all old enough. 

The utmost extreme of this early error of ours is 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 301 


found in our general scheme of Heaven or even of an 
earthly Utopia. When we give free rein to fancy in 
seeking to portray happiness we arrange that an 
individual may have everything he wants, and be 
provided with some eternal miracle in the way of ap- 
petite, it is to be hoped, that he may keep on want- 
ing it! 

The Happy Hunting Grounds of our American 
savages and the old Norse Walhalla had some action in 
them, probably because the savage believers knew of 
no other way to procure food save by hunting for it. 
With the red man and the brawny slayer of Scan- 
dinavia, action was so intimately connected with gratifi- 
cation and with honour that their future state had 
something doing as well as eternal banqueting. But 
observe the more sophisticated Mohammedan Paradise, 
with its ecstatic debauchery, and our own Hebrew 
Heaven, with its music and jewelry and the chorused 
adoration of an oriental court,—no action is predi- 
cated of these, save that necessary to get there. We 
postulate rest, peace, plenty, rich and beautiful sur- 
roundings, things to have for eternal joy, not things 
to do. 

Some of our seers and philosophers have often per- 
ceived the fallacy of this belief, and have preached in 
various voices to the effect that man should “ Act well 
his part—there all the honour lies.” 

Moreover, most of us practically find that there is 
more pleasure in doing what we are best fitted for than 
in having anything whatever; but still the dominant 


302 HUMAN WORK 


governing theory of humanity holds that a man’s real 
business is to get such and such good and that “ he won’t 
be happy till he gets it”! I heard this theory well 
expressed in passing by two men in the street recently ; 
well-dressed, important-looking, elderly men: 

** Yes,” said one of them, shaking a handsome cane, 
“they get their money all over the world and come here 
to spend it, to live! ” 

A better expression of this dominant belief it would 
be hard to find. The immense world-wide activities of 
the business men alluded to were defined merely as “ get- 
ting money,” and the spending of that money, the ob- 
taining all manner of materials for consumption, was 
defined as “ living.”” Acting under this belief we see 
the majority of mankind using continual effort to get 
things for themselves and their families, and, when the 
things they desired are attained, yet no resultant satis- 
faction follows, they merely transfer the ideal and seek 
to get more, other, and different things. Against this 
tendency a minor line of philosophy has been levelled, 
preaching contentment, but this philosophy is still on 
the wrong basis, for it is still the things we are told 
to be contented with—those we have instead of those 
we have not, that’s all. 

In practical truth the happiness of man in what he 
gets is limited, extremely limited, but the happiness of 
man in what he does is unlimited. The receiving 
capacity of our nervous system is soon exhausted, but 
the discharging capacity has no limit but that of 
natural periods of rest. The pleasure in expression 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 303 


increases with use, the pleasure in impression decreases 
with use. 

It is interesting, pathetic, and absurd, to see the 
spasmodic contortion of nature under the effort to 
enjoy having things. We enjoy food, naturally. The 
use of food is, plainly, to enable us to do things, and if 
we do enough we always enjoy food. But the foolish 
person ignores doing things and seeks to enjoy food as 
an end in itself. The enjoyment soon palling, and even 
decreasing as the natural appetite decreases, the foolish 
person then pushes on in a line of artificial enhance- 
ments of this natural function, bringing in an elaborate 
convocation of other senses, with various luxuries and 
arts, so as to prolong and increase his enjoyment. The 
enjoyment receding vaguely before him, he adds eccen- 
tricities to his luxuries, runs the gamut of elaborate 
changes, and plays Hob with his internal organs, all 
in the persistent endeavour to hold on to the enjoyment 
of eating. 

In this particular field of enjoyment no animal alive 
has attained such subtle, exquisite, and long-drawn pain 
as we have achieved withal. Our array of alimentary 
diseases is really instructive, yet does not seem really to 
instruct us. We still persist in putting the cart before 
the horse and looking for pleasure in what we get. In 
the field of economic action, this fallacy exerts: a con-. 
stant evil influence not only by checking the output, but 
by degrading and distorting that output to suit the 
growing vitiation of taste which always results from 


this belief. 


304 HUMAN WORK 


The governing concepts of any society at any period 
tend inevitably to such and such results, but their effect 
is modified by interaction and by many external circum- 
stances. As the society grows and circumstances change 
we may see one and another root-thought working to its 
special result; checked by this, modified by that, but 
always tending to its own end. So this one thought, 
acting with all our others, right and wrong, may be 
followed in the ever-present social tendency to luxury 
and excess. | 

If you believe that happiness lies in the impressions 
you receive, you naturally modify your action to the 
purpose of securing the desired impression. Seeing the 
impressions fail to produce the expected happiness, but 
still believing in the theory, you simply strive to secure 
further impressions. Finding, as jaded emperors have 
found, that to have everything in the world you want 
does not make you happy, you still hold on to the 
theory and merely sigh for new worlds to conquer; or, 
if your religion is also built on this theory, look for- 
ward to an eternity of having things to make you 
happy. 

The demand for happiness is perfectly healthy and 
right, but we are mistaken as to the means. Every 
possible impression receivable by the human sensorium 
is merely an incentive to expression. We are trans- 
mitters of energy, not vats for storage. Our capacity 
for storage is merely to give us wider and longer range 
in our discharge. The living force of the Universe is 
pushing through man, and as that force is greater than 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 305 
he, so is the joy of doing greater than the joy of 
having. ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.” 
Of course! 

Let us study some of the practical results of this 
false concept of ours. One of the most exquisitely 
sublimated extremes of its action is seen in our dis- 
tinctively human practice of what is called “ collect- 
ing.” It is bewildering at first. That a squirrel 
should collect nuts, and, on the same line, that Pharaoh 
should collect wheat, or that the housewife should col- 
lect food in advance, is all “ natural.” That anyone 
should collect that “ greatest common denominator,” 
money, is the same tendency as above. But that a 
human creature should collect a vast supply of objects 
which he does not use, never intends to use, and could 
not use if he wanted to, is truly remarkable. 

The objects may be of use to other people—if they 
had them—as in innumerable pieces of china, but of 
no use to him; or they may be of no use to anybody, like 
defaced postage-stamps—but that does not affect the 
collecting instinct. This depraved appetite, seeking to 
acquire for personal ‘ ownership ” without even the 
excuse of consumption, frankly waiving the pleasure 
of using the things and affixing that pleasure solely to 
the getting and having of them, is as morbid a process 
as could well be imagined. It is ‘* the mania for own- 
ing things ” in full delirium. 

What is the normal law of ownership? It is simple, 
like all natural laws. 

Social processes are served through the social body, 


306 HUMAN WORK 


through a great number of detached mechanical struc- 
tures. The social functionaries, in order to carry on 
their functions, must have a certain extra-physical 
environment. The family and the individuals therein 
must have homes, the body must have its clothes, the 
worker of all sorts must have his tools, his shop, all that 
is necessary for his work. Society requires of the in- 
dividual the performance of certain functions. That 
performance requires the continuous use of certain 
mechanical adjuncts. Society must guarantee to the 
individual the continuous possession of those adjuncts, 
of the things necessary for him to do his work. That 
is the social “‘ right of property.” 

All property is a social product, evolved in the course 
of social development, needed by society for the social 
service. Any social factor, a carpenter, for instance, 
is a working agent consisting of a human animal spe- 
cially skilled and specially tooled. Without the skill 
and the tools he is not a carpenter. Society having 
evolved the skill and the tools, certain members of So- 
ciety then become carpenters. Since their skill is essen- 
tial to the social service, Society must educate them; 
since their tools are essential to the social service, So- 
ciety must secure the tools to the man. 'This is owner- 
ship, a social right, quite just, and perfectly natural. 

Social relations are psychic. Property rights are 
psychic relations. We agree that such men shall own 
such things, and they do. We deny that such men own 
such things, and they don’t! Men once owned slaves— 
everywhere. This “right” was gradually withdrawn 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 307 


by the givers, until it-now only exists in certain locali- 
ties of low social development. Parents once “ owned ” 
their children, could kill or sell them. This right has 
been withdrawn. 

There is no ultimate basis for human rights but the 
best interests of Society, and our conscious recognition 
of human right depends on our knowledge of those in- 
terests. Thus our rights change from age to age, as 
Society changes, and our laws and customs slowly fol- 
low the new developments in social consciousness. In 
our time we are in the active throes of change on two 
great subjects, the rights of women and the rights of 
property. 

On the latter head this formula is advanced as a 
safe one: The individual has a right to those things 
necessary for him to best serve Society. That is, the 
carpenter has a right to his tools, and the musician to 
his instrument, both to their special education, and they 
and all men to the food, shelter, clothing, and other 
things necessary to their best social service. 

Not a return equivalent to, as we try to arrange our 
system of payment, but a supply necessary to, in ad- 
vance. If a man is to write books for humanity he 
has a right to his pen, ink, and paper; and to such 
other conditions as are essential to his best productivity ; 
but because one man’s books are worth ten times as 
much as another’s, is no reason why he should have ten 
times as much pen, ink, and paper. 

Consumption is a means to production—impression 
is of value as it conduces to expression. The pleasure 


308 HUMAN WORK 


and the duty are in Doing. Having is merely contribu- 
tory. 

Our mistake about consumption is what our pay- 
ment system rests on; we work merely to obtain some- 
thing; and that something is rigorously measured ac- 
cording to our previous labour. In changing the 
ground of our thought, we shall recognise that produc- 
tion is the main issue of life; that consumption is essen- 
tial to it; that each social factor has a right to such 
supplies as shall best promote his productivity, and 
that they shall be provided him in advance. 

“The mill will never grind with the water that ”— 
hasn’t come! 

If this position be reluctantly admitted, there follows 
the alarmed demand: ‘ But if the consumption of the 
individual is not measured by his previous output, how 
shall we measure it—how shall we prevent him from an 
inordinate, a disproportionate, socially wasteful con- 
sumption? ” 

How do you measure the dinner for your family and 
friends? What prevents them from eating a bushel 
apiece? The natural limit of consumption is capac- 
ity, the natural measure is necessity and appetite. A 
constant and sufficient supply of anything does not pro- 
voke inordinate consumption—quite the contrary. A 
refined and moderate selection is the result of full and 
adequate provision. Inordinate consumption is the 
result of a deranged supply. People who customarily 
do not have certain things cannot develop taste and 
judgment in selecting them. 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 309 


People who generally have too little, are quite apt to 
take too much when occasion offers. Knowing that the 
supply is uncertain leads to taking more than is wanted, 
so as to store for future use; and the “* pecuniary canons 
of taste,”’ so ably described by Veblen (‘* Theory of the 
Leisure Class ”), lead to that meretricious display and 
cultivated wastefulness which form another phase of 
our abnormal consumption. 

Natural production tends to fill the world with con- 
stantly improving supplies. Natural distribution tends 
to place those supplies where they will do the most good. 
Natural consumption tends to appropriate all that is 
good and beneficial, and thereby promotes production— 
a spiral of social progress. 

We have seen how production and distributron are 
injuriously affected by our misbeliefs, notably by the 
attitude of the obsequious caterer to the desires of the 
purchaser. The reason these desires are so deteriorating 
to the world’s production is in our false attitude to- 
ward consumption. The combined effect of our popular 
economic superstitions reaches a considerable height of 
injury to society. | 

Here is the producer limiting his output, as far as 
possible, to something well within his income, each man 
striving to get out of the world more than he puts in: 
whereas all our wealth and progress is conditioned upon 
our putting in more than we take out—and thanks to 
the marvellous productivity of the race, we do, we must, 
so put in, in spite of our ego-centric struggles. Here 
is the producer, again, guiding the kind and quality of 


310 HUMAN WORK 
his output, not by real human needs, or by the laws of 
improvement inherent in the product, but by the weak- 
nesses and artificially fomented tastes, as well as by the 
purchasing power of “ the market.” 

If “‘ the market ” has a small purchasing power, that 
means, under our economic system, that the human 
beings composing it are low-grade stock, cannot pro- 
duce much themselves. Under sociological law it would 
follow that they be supplied with the best things, in 
order to improve their productive power, in order, 
again, so to add to the social wealth. But in our 
method, measuring what a man shall have by what he 
can do, we give the least to those who need the most! 
Surely anyone can see how stupid this is—to limit con- 
sumption to the value of previous output, and so 
steadily to maintain a low output. Conversely, by seek- 
ing to increase consumption in proportion to out- 
put, we again do evil; for consumption has its own 
inexorable limits, bearing no relation whatever to 
output, after the needs of the producer are really 
sup plied. 

Surely, this too, is plain. 

So much fertiliser to the acre will increase the crop— 
but not indefinitely. So much fuel to the fire will in- 
crease the steam pressure—but not indefinitely. So 
much oats to the horse will increase his speed—but not 
indefinitely. And so much of our great stock of social 
goods will increase a man’s social value, his health, hap- 
piness, and working power—but not indefinitely. Be- 
cause I am the better worker for a house suited to my 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 311 


needs, I am not therefore ten times the better worker 
for ten houses suited to my needs. 

Food, clothing, education, painting, literature, music, 
entertainment,—a certain amount is good for a man, 
improves a man, belongs to a man; but the indefinite 
multiplication of that amount merely injures the man. 

Now suppose we change our minds about consump- 
tion. Suppose we do fairly recognise these plain, 
natural facts: 

(a) Man lives by virtue of social relation. 

(b) Social relation consists in specialised inter- 
service. 

(c) That interservice consists in the production and 
distribution of all our human goods—from potatoes to 
poetry. 

(d) The advantage to Society lies in the constant 
development of its processes, a better and easier pro- 
duction and distribution. 

(e) The duty of the individual lies in his best service 
to Society in these vital processes; and the duty of So- 
ciety lies in supplying to the child the best conditions 
for full growth and genuine education, and in continu- 
ing to provide to the adult those conditions essential to 
his full, free, and most efficient service. 

(f) All that we produce is intended for the main- 
tenance and development of Society. 

(g) All that we consume is intended to promote our 
productivity and general social value. 

(h) The advantage of the individual lying abso- 
lutely in the hands of Society, it is the obvious busi- 


312 HUMAN WORK 


ness of the individual to see to it that Society performs 
its duty to him—to all of him—and, as obviously, to 
perform his full duty to it—which is merely all of him. 

With this economic creed we should see each indi- 
vidual doing his best work, and Society eagerly hasten- 
ing to supply to each individual all that he needed to do 
his best work. As against this consummation devoutly 
to be wished stand our existing economic concepts: 

(a) Men live by virtue of their own work. 

(6) Men have to work in order to satisfy wants. 

(c) The satisfaction of wants is the purpose of life. 

(d) The advantage to the individual lies in his get- 
ting as much as he can, and doing as little as he can—in 
“* buying cheap and selling dear.” 

(e) The improvement of the individual] les in So- 
ciety’s not giving him anything till he has shown that 
he has it already—or its equivalent in labour. Thus the 
less ability he has, the less of anything he gets—which 
improves him. 

(f) All that a man produces is his own, and he has a 
right to consume it all himself, or destroy it—in any 
case, to withhold it from those who want it till they give 
him as much as he can get for it. 

(gz) All that a man consumes is pure advantage—the 
advantage of life. To have everything we want, to ac- 
cumulate more than we want, to invent new wants with 
infinite pains and supply and oversupply them—this 
is happiness. And since we find practically that the few 
who do it are not happy, and that the many who cannot 
do it are not happy either, we assume an eternal ap- 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 313 
petite, and an eternal gratification in another 
world! 

(Singular thing—the unsatisfied desires of Man! 
Trying to put a quart measure in a pint cup through 
an india-rubber eternity !) 

(h) The advantage of the individual lying abso- 
lutely in his own hands, it is his obvious business to 
take care of himself; and since the pressure of social 
relation cannot be ignored, we assume that the business 
of society is simply to preserve “a fair field and no 
favour ” for individuals to struggle in! 

“That government is best which governs least.” 

“Give us natural opportunities and freedom.” 

‘** A man has a right to do anything he pleases that 
does not interfere with the rights of others.” 

Fortunately for us the working of natural law is that 
of the first creed; and our personally misguided con- 
duct of affairs cannot wholly crush back the social 
growth belonging to our time. 

In this connection it is important to note the influence 
of women, in their artificially restricted position, upon 
the world’s consumption, not only in economic fact, but 
in our inherited feeling and education on that subject. 

Women, as we have repeatedly seen, were the first pro- 
ducers. Creative industry is theirs by the deepest laws 
of nature. The female is the original reproductive 
stream of life; and in the higher stages of her develop- 
ment she still manifests the larger range of race-activi- 
ties. In the human species for by far the longest period 
of our life, the proto-social, she was the main—almost 


314 HUMAN WORK 


the sole—producer, men being mostly destroyers. But 
for the most of our historic period, all the time that is 
best known to us, women have been prevented from tak- 
ing part in progressive human production and re- 
stricted to the duties of a house servant. 

What tendency to specialised social service they 
might manifest was promptly banned as “ unwomanly,” 
belonging only to men. The man elected himself to be 
sole producer, in the large social sense; and the woman 
was to be only a consumer, to depend on him for her 
maintenance and take what he gave her. 

The position is acutely abnormal—quite opposite to 
the inherent nature of the female. It is her instinct to 
give—not to take; ably to do, not feebly to be done for. 

This unnatural attitude was forced upon her, how- 
ever, with two results, inevitable results, as regards con- 
sumption. 

One is that all her flood of power and patience and 
infinite service being confined to her one master and their 
children, she has developed in them inordinate appetites 
and morbid tastes. The productive force that should — 
flow broad and smooth in Society at large, being bot- 
tled up at home, with no consumer but the family, neces- 
sarily accustomed the family to receiving more than 
was good for it; thus maintaining in the world the an- 
cient selfishness of the primitive individual, which real 
social life tends steadily to reduce. The social instincts, 
those large and outflowing feelings we call generosity, 
justice, altruism, are bred in the mutual service of spe- 
cialised social industry ; but the individual instincts, once 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 315 


virtues, now become vices if too prominent, are nursed 
and fed continually in that hotbed of all personal in- 
dulgence, the wife-served home. 

Thus the position of woman promotes the tendency 
to inordinate and morbid consumption in man and 
child. 

But it has also a direct influence on her. She is born 
and reared in this same atmosphere; she inherits from 
father as well as mother; the habits of many genera- 
tions have a gradual effect upon her, and all old civili- 
sations show one monstrous sight, the bottomless greed 
of the artificially bred women. 

As Cleopatra outdid Antony in 
sumption ”—swallowing a dissolved pearl worth more 
than all his gobbled delicacies; as Nana destroyed ex- 
pensive furnishings just to amuse herself; so have these 
horse-leech’s daughters outdone any sons that estimable 
sucker may have had, in the cry of Give! Give! 

Burne-Jones’ picture of “ The Vampire” typifies 
well man’s opinion of this horror which he has so care- 
fully made. Our instinctive dislike of greed in a woman 


** conspicuous con- 


is based on its unnaturalness, it is essentially foreign to 
her sex. But the fact remains that women, in their 
false position, have become greedy beyond description. 
The bountiful producer, aborted, has become a destruc- 
tive parasite. 

The boundless pouring love, compressed to primitive 
limits, becomes morbid and works evil; and the habit 
of always taking, and never doing, has produced its un- 
avoidable result, and given us the woman we all know, 


316 HUMAN WORK 


who takes, greedily, from a childhood of wheedling, 
through a youth of coquetry, and a lifetime of hired 
matrimony. When it is not matrimony, language fails 
to express our horror; but when it is, the commercial 
basis discolours the relation; and the plump and beauti- 
ful creature in the costly surroundings she never 
thought of giving a return for, is in the same category 
as a consumer with her less respectable but no less 
plump and expensively surrounded sister. 

To find the pleasure of life in getting and having, to 
feel no honourable impulse to do, to give, to work, to 
return to labouring humanity your quota of service,— 
this is the degraded position into which we have forced 
our women, and which expresses itself not only in them, 
but in their children, who are all the world. 

Such women play the game we call “* Society,” whose 
trivial performances are celebrated so respectfully in 
our newspapers in their record of dinners and dresses 
and dances, as if where these people ate, or what they 
wore, or how they hopped about, was of any earthly im- 
portance. The seriousness with which this class of 
people who have cut themselves off from human life by 
refusing to take part in its active processes, who neither 
produce nor distribute, but consume in ever-increasing 
ratio, take upon themselves the distinctive name of “ So- 
ciety ” is one of the most paralysing jokes of history. 
They even designate their pitiful amusements as “ social 
functions,” a misnomer as consummately absurd as 
** Christian Science.” 

For a lot of richly caparisoned human animals to get 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 317 


together and eat, or embrace one another and caper 
about to the sound of music, has no more relation to a 
social function than St. Vitus’s dance has to chopping 
wood. A disease is not a function. This fatty degen- 
eration of the social tissues is a sad and important fact, 
deserving careful study; but its importance lies in its 
danger to the rest of the body Po not in any in- 
herent dignity. 

If we take our “ Society Columns 
tins, they have some value perhaps; but vulgarly to 
enlarge on our forms of disease is at least bad taste. 
What we commonly call ‘‘ Society ” is a morbid growth 
in the real social structure, developed to meet the arti- 
ficial needs of these misplaced women; and such a so- 
ciety, influencing as it does, through widening ranks of 
imitators, the markets of the world, has a most evil 
effect on our habits of consumption. 

If we saw clearly on these lines, recognising produc- 
tion as a law of Human, 2. e., Social Nature, then our 
women, as our men, would take part in the healthy proc- 
esses of real social life. If we saw that this constantly 
increasing expression of a constantly increasing fund of 
social energy was limitless happiness, we should turn 
our competition another way, cease this painful effort 
to show who can get the most, and begin to run races to 
show who shall do the most, with the result that there 
will be more for everyone to have. 

Meanwhile, under the action of this special delusion 
about consumption, we continue to fill the world with 
false products, and to spend strenuous lives trying to 


*? as medical bulle- 


318 HUMAN WORK 


get them away from one another. Can we not recognise 
this one thing, that consumption is but a means to an 
end; that production, Work, is the end to which a legiti- 
mate consumption is a necessary means, and that the 
only natural and practical measure of consumption is 
the need of the consumer. 


SV GONSUMPTION (IT) 
Summary 


Resistance of false concepts to true. Spread of litera- 
ture. Use of imagination. Hypothesis as to natural 
laws m consumption—free clothing—Veblen. An un- 
natural market. Commodity money a check to distri- 
bution and production. Real conditions. Enormous 
producing power of civilised man. Legitymate con- 
sumption. T'ruffies. Free transportation. Free pro- 
vision reduces demand and increases productivity. 
Property rights and personal ownership. Evolution of 
ownership, ownership a psychic relation, a social condi- 
tion, based on social needs. True law of ownership: 
“Society must msure to the individual those things 
which are essential to his social service.” Decrease of 
self-interest. Success of our surviving savages. “ Mak- 
ing money.” Normal wealth must circulate. Belief 
in polygamy. Natural relation not Communism. 
Legitimate personal property is in goods consumed— 
not m goods produced. Normal ownership inheres in 
normal consumption. Production belongs to Society. 
Man does not consume his own product, but that of So- 
ciety. Human rights social—essential conditions of 
true social relation. Previous position, based on Ego 
concept and Want theory, does not work well. Com- 
pulsory production not normal. Owner and Employer. 
* Iron law of wages.” Want not a productive force,— 
tends only to consumption. Organic action of Society. 
America’s productivity does not show commensurate 
greed, but fuller supply of social nourishment and stim- 
ulus. Parent’s relation to child, and Society’s. Social 
duty. 


XV 
CONSUMPTION (ITI) 


Ovr minds are so thoroughly accustomed to thinking 
along false lines in economics that true and natural 
social processes, when described to them, seem but fan- 
tastic dreams. 

This is only according to the brain’s working habits ; 
it takes time to change it, and we need much paticnce 
with ourselves and one another while changing. Fortu- 
nately for the age we live in, there has been so much 
change in so many lines that further progress is easy, 
compared to what it was a few centuries ago. Fortu- 
nately in especial for the country we live in, its national 
attitude is that of welcome to the new, suspicion of the 
old. | ) 

In the wonderful spread of the great art, Literature, 
and particularly the branch art, Fiction, as distributed 
so universally among us by our libraries, our periodi- 
cals, and the daily press, we have far more general use 
of the imagination—our brains will stretch. This 
faculty of imagination is no mere factor in telling 
fairy-tales; it is that power of seeing over and under 
and around and through, of foreseeing, of construct- 
ing hypotheses, by which science and invention profit as 
much as art. Distance, perspective, proportion, these 
are obtained, in our consideration of facts, by use of the 

321 


322 HUMAN WORK 


imagination. The rocks and stars confronted the 
savage as they did the beast, and with little more result ; 
they were visible facts, that is all. He could not 
imagine any further content in his observation. We 
observe, similarly unmoved, the facts in economics. 

Now let us use this common faculty of imagination ; 
and, judging by man’s behaviour in conditions we do 
know, try to measure what it would be in other condi- 
tions. Let us take one concrete instance in this process 
of consumption, a perfectly conceivable hypothesis, 
and see for ourselves how it would work out. 

We will now assume that clothing was free to all. 
This does not mean that it was dropped from the sky; 
we are still to produce and distribute it; but the final 
absorption by the individual is unchecked. What would 
be the consequence? At first there would be a rushing 
seizure by the people who have never been satisfied in 
clothing—they would take and take again—greedily— 
inordinately—sacking the shops and stuffing their 
houses. But suppose the supply is maintained, steadily. 
They would soon find it was inconvenient to stuff their 
houses, if the stores remained always to draw from. The 
hoarding instinct does not spring from continued 
plenty, and becomes foolish in the face of it. 

Then, though not carrying off so much, they would 
perhaps choose the most beautiful and expensive 
fabrics. Finding that all wore the same, these distinc- 
tions would cease to distinguish; if everybody was wear- 
ing velvet at will, the result would be that those who did 
not really like it would leave it off. If everybody was 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 323 


wearing lace, they would find it was too frail for outing 
costumes. If there was no artificial glamour on one 
stuff more than another; if the supply was steady and 

e==free; then, slowly, gradually, timidly, would appear 
for the first time among us true personal choice! 
People would at least know what they personally pre- 
ferred and have it; clothing would be adapted to genu- 
ine need and genuine taste. 

Our habits of consumption are so complicated by long 
deprivation on the one hand, and by “ the pecuniary 
canons of taste”? (Veblen) on the other, that most of 
us live and die without ever knowing what we really 
want. ‘The Market” for which our producers com- 
petitively cater is an unnatural one. What we call 
“the demand ” is not a healthy, legitimate demand; it 
is uncertain, capricious, subject to strange fluctua- 
tions and reactions; and in endeavouring to “ supply ” 
it, the most experienced and far-sighted producer often 
fails. 

What is legitimate consumption? Is there any meas- 
ure by which the world’s market could be regulated? 
No measure is needed. Our mistake here is due to con- 
tinually seeking to govern production by an arbitrary 
system of payment. On the theory that a man will not 
work except for pay, it follows that his work will be 
strictly adjusted to the pay; and thus the tendency 
to a constantly increased productivity is held rig- 
idly in check by our existing means of payment. 
Commodity money adds the last straw to this heap 
of folly. 


324 HUMAN WORK 

Men will work only for pay. 

Pay must be money. 

Money must be gold. 

So the amount of human productivity must be 
measured not by the muscular power, brain power, and 
machine power of society; nor even by the amount of 
corn and wool, wine and oil, wood and stone, and other 
necessaries ; but by the amount of one particular metal. 
It is fortunate we have not elected to measure human 
production by radium! 

It was bad enough to try to check our vast output 
by an arbitrary equivalent in goods; but it is so much 
worse to squeeze and strain it through this tiny gauge 
that it does seem as if we might have seen our foolish- 
ness long since. But that is where the power of a con- 
cept is so much greater than that of a fact. As a mat- 
ter of fact, the bulk of the world’s business is done on 
credit ; and its material vehicle is paper—a mere matter 
of record of transaction; but in our minds we still deal 
only in gold; and every once in a while we must inter- 
rupt the course of production and distribution to see if 
all accounts can be balanced in gold. As the business is 
necessarily in advance of the gold—always and al- 
ways—we have to exert ourselves to get more gold— 
even if we must go to war for it. 

Try the imagination again—see the consequence if 
gold suddenly grew common as dirt—and lost its sup- 
posed “ purchasing power.” Talk of “ fiat money ”— 
never was any fiat more purely arbitrary than this 
solemn assumption of ours that a hungry world can- 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 325 


not eat—a strong world cannot work—a vast and in- 
tricate organism in full swing of vigorous life cannot 
perform its functions—without every act of mutual 
service being measured in gold. The vital facts in the 
case have no more connection with gold than with 
wampum. Production and consumption go on as con- 
ditions of our organic life; distribution facilitates both; 
and we, governed by this Punch and Judy troupe of 
primitive ideas, check and pervert all these great func- 
tions. 

What are the facts in true social economics as con- 
cerning this question? ‘They are these. The earth 
furnishes us with the raw materials for living. Civi- 
lised man is able to combine those materials in consum- 
able form, and to distribute them to all, with increasing 
facility. Even under all our obstructions, the rate of 
production and distribution increases with rapid strides ; 
if free—it is impossible to estimate the gain. 

Put it something like this: 

A primitive man can obtain the necessities of life by 
giving all his time to it. A civilised man of our day can 
produce his share of all the necessities of life, in say one- 
tenth of his time. In the other nine-tenths he can pro- 
duce comforts, luxuries, all the higher products of hu- 
man life. Under right conditions, civilised man could 
produce the necessities in a hundredth part of his time, 
and could so grow and improve as to lift all the higher 
products to a far more advanced stage. Fully supplied 
with all he needs of this social wealth, the producing 
power of civilised man is far beyond his needs. “ His 


326 HUMAN WORK 
needs ”’ brings us again to the question, ‘* What is legiti- 
mate consumption? ” 

We assume that, unless rigidly kept down by arbi- 
trary forces, man would riotously consume in un- 
ending profusion; that he could not possibly supply 
enough for general consumption; and that since the 
supply is limited, it should be rigidly confined to those 
who can pay for it. This is an unwarranted claim. 
Normal consumption does not increase in any such wild 
way. 

The normal demands of the whole human race for 
food can be met by the materials at hand. Observe that 
they are in some measure met now; our millions do live, 
do eat, even under present conditions. They might live 
better, have a more improving diet, under better condi- 
tions. But if, like Mr. Bounderby, we assume that 
everyone will wish “ to be fed on turtle soup with a gold 
spoon ”—we are wrong. ‘“ Have some truffles!” urges 
Mr. Newrich. ‘I don’t care for any,” answers Mr. 
Bornrich. ‘* Not care for truffles? ” cries Mr. New- 
rich; ** why, they cost five dollars!” ‘ What of that? ” 
says Mr. Bornrich; ‘‘ I don’t like *em!” ‘* Conspicuous 
consumption ” is a feature of leisure-class culture, of 
illegitimate wealth founded on illegitimate poverty. 
With consumption on a natural basis, there would be no. 
great demand for nightingales’ tongues. 

Observe the existing facts in any department of so- 
cial supply we have made free to all. Our highroads 
are free—but we do not therefore run continually up 
and down on them, just because we can. We travel as we 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 327 


have need of it, that is all. Free roads facilitate normal 
traffic and promote civilisation. Yet, when it is urged 
that free railroad travel is a necessity to-day, there is a 
horrified dissent. ‘* What? let people travel on the rail- 
road without paying for it? Why, they would travel 
all the time!” You see we do use our imaginations a 
good deal. These objectors imagine that mankind 
would desert both business and pleasure, forego the 
joys of home and the attractions of both city and 
country, to spend their days in the discomforts of a 
railroad train, and their nights in those culture tubes 
of all bacilli, the sleeping cars,—just because travel 
was free! 

Have we never seen the plain and common fact that 
free provision of anything reduces the demand to the 


> are not wanted, 


normal at once? Things “ common ’ 
unless they are really wanted. All artificial demand 
drops off. There is no pride, no element of “* conspicu- 
ous waste ” in having what everyone can have, in doing 
what everyone can do. But the normal demand goes on, 
and the world is enriched, all progress is promoted, by 
the gratification of that need. 

Sometimes people do things merely because they cost 
money,—to show financial superiority,—but they do not 
_do things merely because they do not cost money. Free 
consumption would not increase any legitimate human 
demand, but it would increase our power, and skill, and 
so our wealth. Recognising that human production is 
conditioned upon previous supply, upon right inherit- 
ance, right education, right environment of all sorts, it 


328 - HUMAN WORK , 
follows that the more fully and freely we supply that 


environment, the more we produce. 

Against this clear sequence stand, like a range of 
mountains, our theories of property rights—of personal 
ownership. Personal ownership, private property; we 
believe in these things as we believe in God,—and a good 
deal more so. These we hold to be basic principles, they 
underlie all else, nothing can shake them. Whoso ques- 
tions or criticises them “ strikes at the foundations of 
Society.” 

It is not the first time that Society has been challenged 
in what it held to be foundation principles, has been led 
to change those principles—and has still survived. 
Cautiously, and gently, not to jar or strain our un- 
used brain areas too much, let us draw near this mighty 
pile and see on what it rests. Bear steadily in mind the 
history of human life—and of all life behind it. See all 
the ages of pre-human evolution going on in their ma- 
jestic work without any dream of such a thing as prop- 
erty, or ownership. See humanity in its slow beginning, 
developing the extra-personal medium of life, the gar- 
ment, shelter, tool. See how these things, detached, yet 
essential, exchangeable because human, yet had to be 
connected with the holder for his personal good ae 
social efficiency. 

Here, as we have shown in the preceding chapter, 
arises the true law of ownership, and ownership as nat- 
ural as that of the beast of his teeth and claws, a true 
social law. It has no individual basis. Individuals 
carry their property on their bodies, it grows there. So- 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 329 


ciety evolves detachable material adjuncts, the made 
things, the social medium. So far as this social medium 
is usable by all, it should be free to all. So far as it is 
peculiar to the specialised social functionary, it must be 
guaranteed to him. Society must guarantee to the in- 
dividual those things which are essential to his social 
service. The civilised man has given up his power of 
caring for himself in order the better to serve Society. 
Society, to profit by this service, must insure right pro- 
vision for the individual. In a clumsy, unjust, ill- 
managed way, it already does so, has always done 
so, it could not live else. But it has not done so 
fairly, or well, and, therefore, it is ill served, it 
suffers and sickens, and in repeated instances has 
died. 

Again and again in history we may see the process: 
the nascent society developing, growing more and more 
specialised and interdependent, that development re- 
ducing the power of individual constituents to take care 
of themselves, self-interest weakening in the mass as 
social interest became increasingly necessary ; and then 
the most primitive members of Society, those still most 
actuated by pre-social instincts, the surviving savages in 
civilisation, taking advantage of the immense social 
productivity, and claiming for themselves the social 
wealth. 

They are not the world’s best servants. Their power 
is not the power of highly specialised talent or genius. 
It is a truism that the more ability a man has to serve 
Society in its advanced needs, as in the arts and 


330 HUMAN WORK 


** make money,” as 


we call the process of individual absorption. 

The gold miners and the mint “‘ make money,” all pro- 
ductive labour makes wealth; but those who secure the 
most of it for themselves are of quite another class. 
The verb “‘ to make ” and the verb “ to take” have not 
the same root. 

This illegitimate development of ownership is in- 
jurious to Society. Wealth, in normal circulation, is 


sciences, the less ability he has to 


productive, is a social advantage. Wealth, in abnormal 
secretion, is not only unproductive of good, but abso- 
lutely evil in its influence. Yet, the whole process, with 
all its mischievous results, is conditioned upon our false 
concept as to personal property and the right of owner- 
ship. Its glaring heights of evil are most conspicuous ; 
but the mischief lies not in the special extreme instance, 
but in the general condition. 

See the effect of a belief in unchecked polygamy. 
Under economic pressure, the mass of the people have 
but one wife, and so are saved the worst effects. But. 
the crowded harems of the great show most shameful 
results—sensuality, cruelty, idleness, physical deteriora- 
tion, conspiracy, murder. Are we then to blame the 
polygamist in proportion to the number of his wives; 
or merely to recognise the principle as wrong,—and the 
one-wived believer as much in error as Solomon? It is 
our common concept of ownership that is to blame, not 
Carnegie and Rockefeller. 

See how the true principle would work out. Society 
is a unit, we are but parts. Social life develops 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 331 
the power to make things—the things which are 
essential to social life. Increase in these things is in- 
crease in social wealth and social power—a ceaseless 
line of development. The good of Society requires the 
best development of all its parts—that they may so 
produce more. The best development of all the parts 
requires the full supply of social goods. 

The social goods belong to Society, are made by So- 
ciety, for Society ; and should be distributed to Society 
as widely, swiftly, and freely as possible; so adding to 
the social good. Now this line of talk, to the general 
mind, means a wallowing sea of communism. We see 
visions of a flat and uniform world, of no ambition, no 
distinction, no privacy, no private property, and there- 
fore no life worth having. This is because we do not 
know what private property really is. 

Legitimate private property includes all that the in- 
dividual needs to consume. All the food he needs, all the 
clothes he needs, all the education he needs, all the tools 
he needs ; to each person what he separately needs, and to 
each group what they separately need of the great fund 
of social advantages. Is not that property enough? All 
that a man can legitimately consume is his own, but 
not what he produces. That is his return to Society. 
What he produces is of no use to him, his dentistry, or 
surgery, or masonry, his teaching or acting, his manu- 
facturing or transporting,—this belongs to Society. 

We have erred in attaching the claim of ownership to 
the goods produced. It belongs only to the goods con- 
sumed. The property rights of the individual to his 


332 HUMAN WORK 


own food, his own shelter, his own clothing, his own 
tools of production,—be they paint brushes, books, or 
chisels,—need never be questioned. So fast as produc- 
tion becomes collective, the means of production become 
collective. Where a separate weaver had a right to 
own the separate loom with which he produced cloth, 
now the group of operators, from “ hand ” to “ head,” 
have a right to own the mill with which they produce 
cloth, but not the cloth. 

To whom then does the cloth belong, if not the 
maker? To the wearer, of course. Cloth, as we have 
shown before, is a social tissue, it is evolved for social 
advantage. It has to be worn by members of Society. 
We recognise this so clearly as to have laws command- 
ing people to wear clothes, punishing them if they do 
not. Such laws might be justly applied to silkworms, 
but hardly to human beings, unless their clothes are also 
provided. No doubt a position like this seems impos- 
sible to our minds, so used are we to the other, to the 
present belief that a man owns what he produces, and no 
one has a right to it; but that he has no right whatever 
to the necessities of life—to the means of production. 

Let us think fairly and courageously about it. Here 
is aman born. This product of his is yet potential, he 
cannot produce until he is grown. What he produces 
when he is grown, in kind and quantity, depends on what 
he consumes as a baby, boy, and youth. Now since So- 
ciety needs his product,—not he, mind you, he has no 
use for the bricks or the books he will make,—since So- 
ciety needs his product, and since that product is con- 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 333 
ditioned upon his previous consumption of previous 
product, Society, in its own interests, must see that he 
is supplied with all proper provision,—he has a right 
to it. 

“A right” means an essential condition. Human 
rights are all social, conferred by social consent, and 
resting upon the social good. The right to individual 
liberty, the right to justice, any right of any time rests 
on the general acceptance of social benefit involved in 
those rights. We have seen long ago that the good of 
Society rested on the best human productivity ; but be- 
cause we believed that productivity to be conditioned 
upon subsequent reward, instead of previous Mache we 
defined our rights accordingly. 

Our position was like this: Society needs our best 
product. Man will not produce, except to gratify his 
own wants. What he produces is his own, because it is 
essential to the gratification of his wants.- Therefore, 
Society must guarantee to each man the product of his 
own labour. 

The effect of the position is this: Conceiving our- 
selves to be independent units, conceiving our end to be 
the gratification of our wants, conceiving our product 
to be a personal possession, and only produced in order 
to gratify wants—we necessarily seek to limit the out- 
put of our work to the measure of our wants. The con- 
suming capacity of the man is made the measure of his 
production, and under such a standard we see no way to 
increase production, except by increasing the consuming 
capacity, the wants. This is held by our existing econo- 


334 HUMAN WORK 


mists to work well, but they overlook certain essential 
elements in the position. 

The free production of the world is ob oad not that 
of the persons who want the most or who get the most. 
No one can show that a man’s social value depends 
on his greediness. To want all things, to want them 
intensely, to want them continually, to want them to be 
of the best,—this does not add to a man’s industry, or 
intelligence, to his skill, ability, talent, or genius. The 
best and most work comes from those who have the most 
ability and inclination to work, though they may be, 
and often are, the most modest of consumers. But—_ 
and here is the neglected element in the case—if pro- 
duction is not free—if productive labour is under any 
compulsion, then truly those who want the most will, if 
they have the power, compel other men to work the most. 
That is, if you do not make things, but merely take 
them, it is obvious that the more you want the more you 
will take. 

To recur to the status of slave labour. In this 
system productivity is under direct compulsion. It is 
proportioned to punishment. The owner of the slave 
labour, if he wanted things, took from the slaves the 
product of their labour, and the more he wanted the 
more he took. In this case the greediness of the owner 
is productive, his slaves produce more because he wants 
more. But if their labour were really free, his wants 
would not affect their productivity. 

Again, in wage labour, we have the employer and the 
employee. What is an employer? He is one who 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 335 


“ owns ” what other men want. They cannot get what 
they want unless he gives it to them. Since these 
things which they want are the necessities of life, they 
must work for pay, they are not free. 

The employer, if he wants things, takes from the 
employee the product of his labour; and, as before, 
the more he wants the more he takes. Since he must, 
in order to gratify his wants, keep these men alive and 
productive, he must return them something; but the 
action of his wants upon their labour tends to keep 
their share at a minimum. This we call the “ iron law 
of wages.” We hold that it stands to reason that a 
man will give as little as he can to get what he wants. 
This is quite true, want does not promote productivity. 

But these employees are not free. If they were in- 
dependent of the employer, he could not make them 
work to gratify his wants. Personal desire does not 
add to personal power, neither does it add to other 
people’s power. Desire, want, hunger, may direct 
action ; but it is not a productive force, it is a tendency 
to segregate and consume, not to produce and distribute. 

Now see the effect of the position here laid down. 

Consumption is but a means to production. Pro- 
duction is a natural function of Society—organic, inter- 
dependent, instinctive. Production is promoted by in- 
creasing social energy and social consciousness, besides 
the self-evident condition of maintenance. 

The organic action of Society necessarily involves a 
common nourishment, as it is even now seen to involve 
a common defence, and beyond that it requires a pro- 


336 HUMAN WORK 


gressive increase in social stimulus. Our increased 
consumpticn is an accompanying condition of our in- 
creased activity, as the hard worker should eat more 
than the idle; but it is the well-distributed nourishment 
that promotes the activity, activity does not nourish. 
Now since the life and progress of Society depend on 
our best production, it is the natural duty of Society 
to so distribute nourishment and stimulus as to promote 
that production. A rich, strong, free, intelligent, 
thoroughly educated society will produce far more than 
a poor, weak, foolish, uneducated society. 

The tremendous productivity of America does not 
result from our wanting more than other people, as is 
popularly supposed, but from our having more. Not 
only the great natural advantages of the country, not 
only the independence which left men more free to work, 
but our public institutions for wide distribution of 
social advantages, such as free education,—these have 
combined to make the American not a greedier, but an 
abler man. Note in small instance the difference be- 
tween our custom of free service of ice-water in the 
theatres, of programmes and the like, of toilet con- 
veniences in the great stores, and all such matters, as 
compared with the twopence or fivepence you have to 
pay extra for so much as a napkin in an eating house 
in England. 

** But,” says the Englishman, ‘ you have to pay in 
the end.” We are willing to pay in the end. Any 
decent man is willing to pay for what he has had. It 
is the difference between the “ European plan” and 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 337 


the “ American plan.” So soon as a more enlightened 
society provides more and more fully and freely for the 
needs of its citizens, so much the more cheerfully will 
they be willing to pay for it. 

Our personal work in the specialised service of the 
great social body which maintains us is our payment 
for goods received. The slave works to avoid the whip. 
His labour might be termed whip-dodging. The em-— 
ployee works to obtain bread withheld. His labour is 
called ‘‘ bread-winning.”” ‘The free and socially con- 
scious human being works because he likes to, because 
he can’t help it, because it is his honourable return in 
small degree for the immeasurable benefits he has re- 
ceived from infancy from his supporting society. We 
have established a very binding sense of ‘duty to 
parents ” because we believed that the father by his 
unaided arm supported the child; the mother by hers 
reared and trained it. The parents unquestionably 
give the child its physical and mental endowment. But 
if we proportioned our duty to parents to the value of 
our inherited constitutions and temperaments, some 
parents would get short shrift. 

Beyond the gifts of birth, the mother’s breast, and 
the tendency to benefit of parental love, what else the 
child receives is from Society. Parents were parents 
and did what they could in savage and pre-savage eras. 
That parents are wiser and tenderer is due to our 
progress in Socialisation. That they are richer and 
more powerful is not due to parenthood, but to Society. 


The heaped-up increment of all the years, the highly 


338 HUMAN WORK 


developed products of our industry and skill, the dis- 
coveries in science, the masterpieces of art,—these are 
all social products not parental. 

The child needs to be supplied with all that he can 
healthfully consume of this his social inheritance, his 
birthright as a human being. Some children have 
more of the social products than others because their 
parents have an arbitrary and unnatural “ ownership ” 
of these products; but as a normal condition of sociol- 
ogy, all children have this claim upon their great social 
entail, with no “right of primogeniture” or other 
usurpation to interfere. So supplied, and so taught 
to recognise the true supplier, it will be as easy to rear 
our children in a sense of duty‘to Society as it is now to 
duty to parents, and more so, because this later, larger 
claim is so indisputably true. With the full productive 
power of the race finally set free and pouring out on 
normal lines, there will be no lack of social benefit 
for all. | 

We have seen the economic advantage of wage 
labour over slave labour; can we not see the even 
greater economic advantage of free labour over wage 
labour? 


Sve tOUR POSLEDION TO-DAY 
Summary 


Fact and delusion. American advantages and possi- 
bilities. Possible consciousness. Perverted Press. 
Falsely maintamed position. Grade A and grade G. 
Soul paradoxes. Old Adam. Arbitrarily opposed 
“ Leisure Class” and “ Working Class.” Parasitism 
actual and potential. Dead matter in live body. Sour 
grapes. Charity an evil. Helplessness of rich man 
trying to establish right relation. Furnishmg employ- 
ment, t. ¢., furnishing payment. Unhealthy secretions 
resultant from over-consumption. Law of private 
servants. Doctor with a herald. Degraded art. 
Human value m work. Painful result of social dis- 
connection im leisure class. Working Class suffers dif- 
ferently. Higher social position of Working Class. 
All human labour collective. False classification. 
Economic relation of sexes, result. Effect on child. 
What he should be taught. The round man i the 
square hole. Extended ill effect of malposition in 
social organism. Waste of energy, inferior workman- 
ship, deterioration of social tissue. Progressive mal- 
nutrition. Genius. 


DAY a 
OUR POSITION TO-DAY 


Tue difference between our real position in social de- 
velopment, and that maintained in our minds, is very 
great. It is as if a strong, capable, rich man suffered 
from mania, had a delusion that he was a puny, feeble, 
evil-minded wretch, and acted like one. Could the 
delusion be removed, he would act like what he really 
was and be happy. 

Taking our own country as a type of social prog- 
ress, what do we find to be its real conditions? In the 
first place, it has every material requisite for health 
and growth. It occupies a piece of the earth’s surface 
big enough and varied enough to supply all the phys- 
ical elements of triumphant advance. It has, second, 
not only a base of the best human stock, but a large 
and steady influx of all human stocks; it represents 
the blended blood of all races, a world-people truly, 
prototype of that cosmopolitan race which will ulti- 
mately cover the globe. This gives a chance for all 
possible development in stock and manifests it. It 
allows also all religions to contribute their best, all arts, 
all sciences; every line of special usefulness known to 
man is known to us. 

There is already sufficient intelligence to administer 
world-interests competently, as shown in clear-headed 

341 


342 HUMAN WORK 


captains of industry. There is already sufficient 
*“ social instinct ’—. e., human love—to make elab- 
orate and costly provision for our defectives and de- 
generates, to push-earnestly for reforms and improve- 
ments in every direction. Yes, there are quite enough 
ardent ‘ homophiles,” warm lovers of the kind, already 
in the field to do all of that sort of work we really 
need. The reason they do not accomplish it all is 
partly the lack of intelligent recognition on the part 
of the rest of us, and partly limitations and errors of 
their own minds. They care enough, but do not know 
enough. So here we are, in plain fact, rich, strong, 
intelligent, loving, quite able to live in magnificent 
wealth, peace, and happiness. : 

In equally plain fact we are living quite other- 
wise. 

We should manifest perfect physical health and 
beauty. We are, on the contrary, nearly all sub-well, 
very many sick, and very few beautiful. When we look 
at the possibilities of the human body, as shown in 
ancient Greece, and then at the kind of cattle we are 
content to be now, it does no credit to our intelligence. 
We should manifest a common grade of education which 
would give to each mind an area of thought including 
the earth and sky, plants, animals, and minerals, the 
wonders of science, the powers of manufacture, the 
whole history of the human race. This would be pos- 
sible to practically all of us with right use of our edu- 
cational advantages. We do manifest, on the con- 
trary, a universal ignorance, even in this comparatively 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 343 


well-educated country, a feeble, purblind, sticky little 
brain stiff with prejudice, shackled with habits, blinded 
with superstitions, and narrow, narrow to the paltry 
limits of one human animal’s own family! 

Of course most of us know in a vague way that there 
are other peoples, that there were other times; but these 
knowledges hang in the background of our minds like 
faded wall-paper, lie far from us, disused and un- 
familiar. The occupied area of the brain, the part we 
think in and feel in all the time, is the tiny spot of ego- 
consciousness. It is as though a man owned the Wal- 
dorf-Astoria and was content to live in a bushel-basket. 
It is quite possible for the average mind, properly edu- 
cated, to waken each morning to a consciousness as 
wide as the world, full of light and air, with the facts 
of life seen in true distance and proportion. This does 
not necessitate accurate, special knowledge of all 
branches of human achievement, but a general knowl- 
edge that there are branches, and how they branch. A 
rightly spent youth should easily give this to every nor- 
mal child. 

But we, on the contrary, waken each morning to the 
cramped, overtrodden field of our immediate personal 
consciousness only. The affairs of the world, our 
world, loom vague and distorted about us, while our 
own, forced upon us by night and day, are so absurdly 
magnified by being held too near that they easily shut 
out the world. Our press, which should give to each 
mind each day its world-view of current progress, is so 
perverted in its function by the cramped minds of its 


344 HUMAN WORK 


egoistic functionaries, that it gives instead a weird 
kinetoscope of what it thinks will interest us! As if 
a general, waiting for dispatches from the field, should 
be entertained by competing orderlies with funny 
anecdotes! As if those anxiously waiting for bulletins 
from the sick room should be provided with impression- 
ist pictures of the patient’s relatives! 

We do not occupy a hundredth part of our mind- 
space, no, nor a thousandth. And in this darkness, 
this cramping limitation, with but a partial and re- 
stricted education and the false world-views of our mis- 
guided press to relieve it, we blunderingly creep about 
in the great world-functions we must serve, each of us 
imagining that he is taking care of himself. The 
difference between our real position and our false and 
artificially maintained one is like this: If, for instance, 
certain marked improvements in telegraphy have been 
invented, raising our social efficiency in that line of 
distribution to grade G, that is our legitimate condi- 
tion; but if these improvements are destroyed by mis- 
guided workmen, bought up and suppressed by mis- 
guided property-owners, keeping our telegraphic effi- 
ciency back in grade A, that is an illegitimate social 
condition. We are really in grade G, but artificially in 
grade A. 

If, again, the machinery of democratic government 
is open to all, our legitimate condition is that of full 
democracy; if a large proportion of persons fail to 
exercise their political functions, preferring to remain 
in a lower grade, or if an entire sex is forcibly pre- 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN B45 
vented from exercising them, that is an illegitimate con- 
dition. 

The economic conditions of society to-day are con- 
fessedly paradoxical. The gain in facility and speed 
of execution is million-fold, and yet men are required 
to work almost as many hours as before their improve- 
ment. The expressed wealth of the world is enormous, 
and the power to multiply it not nearly used, yet a vast 
proportion of our members are not fully supplied with 
the necessaries of life. In ways too commonly known 
to need enumeration here we may observe this strange 
difference between our real period of social evolution, 
with its beneficent results, and the existing state of 
Society. 

The persistent survival of lower social forms, becom- 
ing more injurious with each advancing age, is one 
conspicuous feature in the case. That we, the foremost 
industrial nation, should have preserved that early 
status of labour, chattel slavery, past the middle of the 
nineteenth century is a historic anomaly; that we still 
preserve the yet lower status of female domestic labour 
is a worse one. That we should maintain side by side, 
in the same age, a democracy for men and a patri- 
archate for women is a brain-splitting anachronism. 

Taken generally, the confusion and irregularity of 
social progress furnish some ground, at least appar- 
ently, to those who assume it to be extra-natural, and 
who postulate direct interference by Spirits of Good 
and Evii to account for the peculiar facts. We need 
no such childish hypothesis, the facts in the case are 


346 HUMAN WORK 


quite sufficient. Our painful and irregular social de- 
velopment is due merely to the presence in a highly 
organised body of the artificially maintained egoism of 
a previous unorganised condition. ‘The “ old Adam ” 
in us is simply the individualistic animal, still protesting 
that he is an individual in the face of centuries upon 
centuries of socialisation. 

Perhaps the most conspicuous feature of our position 
to-day is that of the strangely distinguished ‘‘ Leisure 
Class ” and * Working Class.” Here is a social body 
whose existence requires mutual service. Here is that 
service performed by that majority of mankind known 
as the “ Working Class.” The Working Class is the 
world. However he prospers, the man who works is he 
who keeps the world going. His labours are the social 
processes, he is Society. The Leisure Class deliberately 
cuts itself off from Society, refuses to take part in its 
processes, yet continues to live on its products. 

This is parasitism, pure and simple. That it is not 
so pure nor so simple as would render it easy to handle, 
or as would warrant us in ruthless excision of a diseased 
mass, is due to the resistless law of social relation which 
holds us still connected even when we think ourselves 
separate. Your wealthy social traitor, refusing social 
duty and absorbing social gain, is no more to blame than 
the workman, who would do the same thing if he had 
the chance, because he believes in the same false prin- 
ciples of economics. But as they stand the leisure 
class is doing incomparably more harm. 

The mere extra drain on our material wealth as rich 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN BAT 


a social body as ours could easily stand. The mere 
malingering, the refusal to work, we could stand; the 
social energy is so abundant, there are so many to serve 
the world. But the position of the overconsuming 
non-producing class is not merely negative and cannot 
be. Withdrawing from normal social processes, the 
leisure class forthwith becomes the seat of abnormal 
social processes, which affect the whole body most in- 
juriously. Every recognised folly and vice of these 
conspicuous ex-members of society spreads its corrupt- 
ing influence around in the healthy structure which sup- 
ports them. A live body cannot maintain dead material 
in its substance without injury. 

Much deeper than the recognised follies and vices, 
though they alone have blackened history, lies the in- 
fluence of the falsehoods on which the leisure class 
rests its position. Let no live member of the body 
politic make the mistake of blaming a disease. If any 
part of Society works wrong, it should be studied, not 
hated; cured, not punished. In our great organic 
union any common error works out its natural result, 
varying in accordance with the part affected. The cal- 
losities and deformities of our social body, its sudden 
illnesses and slow, wasting: diseases, call for our utmost 
wisdom and for a change of conduct, but they do not 
call for childish rage. 

This mischievous by-product called the leisure class 
can be eliminated by healthy action on the part of the 
real social body. It has no existence except as we make 
and uphold it. Like the criminal class and the pauper 


348 HUMAN WORK 


class it is an inevitable result of our imperfect social 
action, and that imperfect social action springs from 
errors in all our minds, not merely in the minds of the 
diseased portion. The attitude of the non-productive 
consumer is the legitimate result of our general eco- 
nomic fallacies; logically, if conditions allowed, we 
would all cheerfully join their ranks. As it is, we all, 
or nearly all, try to, and the successful, knowing this 
full well, are naturally not much moved by the criticisms 
of unsuccessful competitors. The flavour of sour 
grapes is clearly perceptible in most of our animadver- 
sion against the rich. | 

Moreover, when a human being of our day, coming 
into some share of the social consciousness proper to 
the time, feels that he has no right to this mass of other 
men’s labour in money form, he can find no way out of 
his position on any basis of strict political economy. 

Charity we know to be evil, though we still fool our- 
selves by organising it and putting great numbers of 
intermediaries between giver and givee. 

The currents of human production, as forcibly modi- 
fied by our laws resting on false economics, do accumu- 
late masses of capital; given individuals find themselves 
on top of the heaps, and they cannot get off! If they 
flatly’ abdicate it is only to let some other eager 
aspirant mount after them. There is something genu- 
inely pathetic in a modern rich man or woman, striving 
to readjust what he recognises as a disproportionate 
provision and absolutely unable to do so. Every step 
he would take is cut off by some traditional error. 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 349 


“TI too will go to work!” cries the uneasy Creesus. 
“I will not sit here and live on the wealth made by 
others!” But all cry out against him. ‘“ Stop! Go 
back! You ‘do not have to work’! Work is only to 
get money, and you have got it; be satisfied and leave 
the field to us! If you work for nothing you lower the 
scale of wages! If you work at ‘ union rates’ you rob 
some poor man of the job!” 

Hemmed in by these theories there is nothing for the 
rich man to do but to keep on working for even more 
money, which is commonly allowed to be excusable if 
not commendable, or to go and play. ‘The true 
** Leisure Class”? only plays. Their playthings cost 
much money, but as this money goes back to those who 
make the plaything they justify themselves by the 
* furnishing employment ” theory. This is a very old 
fallacy, and impossible to refute while we believe that 
work is a thing done to get wealth, and that wealth 
may be legitimately ‘‘ owned” to an indefinite amount 
by individuals. 

As Society increases in productivity wealth increases, 
and by our arbitrary apportionment it increases in the 
hands of individuals—it has to. These individuals 
holding all the goods and other people needing the 
goods, yet the Pay theory—no goods except for pre- 
vious work—acting sharply here, the only legitimate 
method of distributing these individual congestions of 
wealth is by “ employing ” as many as possible. And 
as we do not consider the work as the important part 
of the exchange, but the pay, so we do not care at 


350 HUMAN WORK 


what the beneficiary is employed, so long as he is 
paid. 

What we call “ furnishing employment” we really 
esteem as “‘ furnishing Payment,”—looking at the good, 
the real good in question, to be the holder of many 
things, making it possible for the worker to also get 
things,—the “ Pleasure-in-Impression ” theory acting 
with the Want theory and the Pay theory. 

So every developing society raises its specially rich 
individuals who do not produce. ‘They, in the increase 
of their inordinate consumption, demand more and more 
service from their fellows, till, instead of one healthy 
human creature easily producing more wealth than he 
can consume, we have this spot of local disease con- 
suming more and more of the labour of other people, 
thus depraving more and more of the substance of 
Society. All these caterers to abnormal appetites cease 
to be producers in a healthy sense; they do not add to 
the well-being of Society by legitimate products for 
social distribution, but add to the ill-being of Society 
by unhealthy secretions centered in one spot. 

If the production of this mass of workers abnormally 
localised is in itself legitimate; that is, if the “ em- 
ployer,” @ ¢., the consumer, consumes only useful and 
beautiful things, even so the effect is injurious if he 
consumes too much; it is still local congestion, though 
of healthy blood; but that position is intrinsically un- 
tenable. No leisure class ever contented itself with 
really useful and beautiful things. You do not make a 
Vitellius on wholesome food. Consumption, pursued as 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 351 


an end, naturally develops into morbid excess, and the 
caterers to it must produce unhealthfully. This is the 
hole in the “ furnishing employment ” theory. 

It is not being employed that benefits a man. If I 
pay a man a hundred dollars a day to sit in one spot 
and twirl his thumbs, or to climb up and down one post 
continually, I am not benefiting him, I am injuring him. 
If I subtract a human being from social service and 
add him to my private service I degrade him, unless I 
do more work by virtue of his service. Here is the law 
of private service: 

A human being is entitled to as many servants as 
he can do the work of better. 

That is, if two men, working separately, can produce 
to a certain amount each, but if the two, combining, one 
serving the other, can then produce through the one 
served more than the previous amount of the product 
of both, that is a legitimate social relation. For the 
doctor to have a helper to take care of and drive his 
horse enables him to do more and better doctoring; he 
can justify his having a servant. But for the doctor 
to “employ ” a driver, a footman, a page, two out- 
riders, and a herald, would not add to his efficiency as a 
doctor; that would be an illegitimate relation. 

The overconsuming rich do mischief first in with- 
holding from the social circulation an undue amount 
of social products, as a mere miser—social congestion ; 
second, by withdrawing from the social service an undue 
amount of labour for their own aggrandisement—a 
social excrescence; and third, by perverting the product 


352 HUMAN WORK 
of their private commando of workers, generating un- 
healthy secretions in the body politic—a social disease. 

The miser merely robs society to a certain degree, the 
employer of much labour for his own gratification robs 
it by so much more, and beyond that comes the steady 
deterioration of an illegitimately directed product, a 
true poison, with the progressive breakdown of the tis- 
sues ensuing. 

This effect on Art is quite plain in history. The 
artist doing great work for the public grows and serves 
the world. The artist catering to an employer does 
not grow, but deteriorates. The work is not only with- 
held from Society, to which it belongs, but is lowered in 
kind. Art is always corrupted and lowered by the 
patronage of luxurious wealth. So is manufacture. 
No plea of ‘* furnishing employment ” to the artist can 
cover this injury to the world. 

The artist should be working for the world which 
made him instead of putting his social product in one 
man’s hands, and the work he does should be noble and 
should improve, as it cannot in that position of per- 
sonal dependence. The value of an artist to the world 
is that he shall do as good work as he can for as many 
people as he can reach; it is of no use to the world that 
he be “ employed” on other lines, nor is it good for 
him. 

Every worker stands in this same social relation. 
The value of a workman to the world is that he do the 
best work for the most people, not that he be “ em- 
ployed ” to make clothes for dogs, or to wear an osten- 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 353 


tatious livery behind a mutilated horse. Every human 
being is to be measured by his value to society, and the 
value is in his work, not in his being “ employed ”—or 
paid. 

Our non-productive consumer, therefore, is unable to 
return to a healthy place in the world. He cannot 
work because he “ does not have to,” and his efforts to 
re-distribute the wealth for his own gratification form 
merely a “vicious circle” of futile and injurious 
activity. 

Now see the pitiful results. Cut off from normal 
connection with the living world by failure to produce, 
and only generating disease in his efforts to consume, 
the unfortunate ex-human begins to die. He may, if 
sufficiently wise and self-restrained, keep his body alive; 
members of the leisure class frequently live to a great 
age; but this well-preserved animal existence only allows 
more time to suffer from the unnatural exile. He is 
not part of the living world, and so falls victim to 
various hideous abnormalities. He dwindles and 
shrivels in social usefulness till, instead of a vigorous, 
valuable man or woman, you have the futile, inadequate 
creature which cannot even wait upon its own wants; 
or, keeping up animal health by caring for the body, 
he shows the deformity of his position in furious and 
senseless activities. 

The most conspicuous feature of our leisure class is 
the elaborate round of purely arbitrary and unnatural 
activities in which they ceaselessly whirl. The only nat- 
ural activities open to them, the physical, become abused 


354 HUMAN WORK 


and perverted in vicious excesses, and their other activ- 
ities are a series of arduous games and sports, changing 
from age to age and year to year, the purposeless and 
hopeless spasms of social energy misused. 

The working class, on the other hand, suffer dif- 
ferently. That they are underpaid is plain, that they 
are overworked is plain; we hear much of this of late 
years; what we do not hear so much of is that they 
suffer most from the same misunderstanding of what 
work is. Looking always at the Pay as the end, the 
Work only as a means, they labour drearily on like a 
blind horse in a treadmill, never seeing their real posi- 
tion in Society, their real duties, nor their real power. 
That the unproductive consumer should believe the 
absurdities on which his absurd position rests is com- 
prehensible; but that the producer, not properly sup- 
pled with social nourishment, and overtaxed in the 
production of the very supplies he does not get enough 
of, should accept the basic fallacies which hold him in 
his even more absurd position,—this is not so compre- 
hensible. san 

Perhaps what does account for it is this: that with 
all his labour and suffering the worker after all ts 
Society ; he is in the main performing great service; he 
has a right to be more contented than the ex-man who 
does not work. He is in the more normal position, 
though he does not know it; and the sociological laws 
are always stronger in their action than our notions. 
As a matter of fact the working class, which does not 
mean merely the “labouring class” of our present 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 355 


terminology, but which includes all workers with hand 
and brain, is the world. They are the acting factors 
in those processes which constitute social life. 

Through all these centuries of unbelief and misbelief 
they have done the things which kept the world alive. 
They have clothed the world, fed the world, housed the 
world, taught the world, beautified and improved the 
world; yes, and have lifted it from savagery to its 
present level. To-day in our democracy they need only 
enlightenment to see a further duty to the world in a 
better organisation of its economic processes. Thrilled 
as they are by the swiftly growing current of social 
consciousness, conscious as they are that things are 
wrong, anxious as they are to set things right, they are 
still hindered by these economic errors of us all. 

Under the Ego concept they speak of ‘* every man’s 


> a sociological 


right to the product of his own labour,’ 
absurdity. In the first place no member of Society 
has any “ own” labour, our labour is all collective and 
co-ordinate. In the second place it is not the product 
of his fraction of our labour that a man wants, but the 
product of the labour of many other persons, of all 
times and places. In the third place it is not even 
“the equivalent ” of his fraction of our labour that 
a man wants, it is a previous supply of the social prod- 
uct bearing no relation to his subsequent output ex- 
cept that of nourishment and stimulus. 

In short, there is no true class-distinction in accept- 
ance of those deep-seated errors which together modify 
the conduct of mankind so injuriously. The false 


356 HUMAN WORK 


classification we are treating is the product of those 
errors. With right economic belief and action there 
would be no division of Producer and Consumer, no 
Leisure Class, no Working Class, no serried ranks of 
Capital and Labour. All would produce, all would con- 
sume; all would work and all would have leisure; all 
would share in the social capital and the social labour, 
-——both elements of social advantage. 

The economic relation of the sexes is of enormous 
importance in our present-day problems, as I have en- 
deavored to point out in my previous book, “* Women 
and Economics.” The economic dependence of the 
female on the male, her food being obtained, not in 
industrial relation with society, but in the sex relation 
with the individual male, affects the race not only 
through the ensuing overdevelopment of sex, but 
through an artificial maintenance of primitive ideas and 
feelings in economics. The woman’s artless attitude of 
taking all that is given her and frequently asking for 
more, without ever entertaining the idea of return in 
kind, of paying for her keep, maintains in the race, as we 
have previously shown, the tendency to inordinate con- 
sumption, the quenchless appetite of a parasite. This 
parasitic appetite is the invariable result of economic 
dependence. We need not wonder at the evolution of 
a parasitic class when we maintain, or seek to maintain, 
a parasitic sex. 

As we have seen in an earlier chapter, another effect 
of this condition is, by its resultant exaggeration of 
the sex nature of the male, to maintain in him the bel- 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 357 


ligerent and destructive tendencies which belong to a 
remote period of race improvement through sex compe- 
tition, a period of animal individualism, and which work 
much evil in a period of constructive and co-ordinate 
industry. Where wealth and progress depend on the 
cordial intelligent interdependence of the group, it is 
most deteriorating to have maintained this primitive at- 
titude of sex combat. Again, the male, being obliged 
to provide goods for several persons besides himself, and 
yet being limited in goods to the amount he can himself 
produce, the natural desires of the individual are aug- 
mented by the accumulated desires of the whole family, 
yet gratified only through him; and each man faces the 
world, with the output of one, yet requiring the income 
to support six—or whatever number he represents! 
According to the Want theory this is a beautiful pro- 
vision of nature for augmenting the man’s output. In 
the light of fact it does nothing of the kind. It simply 
augments his desire to get—in no way adding to his 
power to give. That moving mirror of life, our litera- 
ture, is one long picture of the effects of this incarnate 
appetite at home, dragging ever at the man’s purse 
strings, and pushing hard against social honour, social 
duty, all the high traits of citizenship. 

The child, most important of all, reared in this at- 
mosphere of continual demand, seeing his father looking 
on the world as a place to hunt for prey for his mate 
and young, seeing his mother do nothing whatever but 
minister to the family needs, inevitably grows up to look 
at life in the same way. To his growing soul, the world 


358 HUMAN WORK 


appears to be a number of houses with families in them. 
The business of life appears to be to keep house for 
these families. ‘The mother does this in a life of per- 
sonal service. The father does it in mulcting “ the 
world ” as far as he is able. 

If, on the contrary, a young human being grew up to 
see his father regarding his work for humanity as the 
chief duty in life, his mother with the same attitude, 
both regarding the consumption of goods as but a 
means to further and better work, and those goods al- 
ways explained to him to come, not from the individual 
exertions of his father “‘ wrestling with the world,” but 
from the combined exertions of that world—that great, 
rich, kind, ever-fruitful, and generous world of willing 
workers which feeds all its children so well,—but I stray 
into consideration of future conditions instead of 
present. 

At present we have for the common lot of humanity 
that painful exhibition known as “the round man in 
the square hole.” Of all human troubles, none is so 
universal as this—a man’s work does not fit him. His 
income is insufficient, his output is insufficient, and he 
does not healthfully enjoy the process of living. A 
general condition of misadaptation, with necessary re- 
sults of malnutrition and malproduction,—that is the 
prominent and visible symptom of our deep-lying psy- 
chological errors. 

Consider the life of a typical average man. 

He is misborn, misfed, mistaught, misclothed, mis- 
governed, to a varying degree. Instead of having a 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 359 


clear view of the social life and his place in it, he has a 
false and distorted view of his personal life, and only 
sees the social action as it infringes on him. He is sur- 
rounded from infancy with poor workmanship, the 
grudging product of those unhappy, misplaced men in 
square holes. The education which should be his intro- 
duction to the great and beautiful facts and laws of 
life, is too often a ** bread-winning ”’ process, practised 
by celibate women, as being more respectable than other 
work, and introducing him merely to a mass of unre- 
lated facts and old ideas. The higher the field of social 
service, the less does ‘* whip-dodging ” or “ bread-win- 
ning ” help, and none is higher than teaching. 

Thus mishandled, the boy grows up without the aid 
of that subtle discernment and delicately applied special 
training which would have brought out his best facul- 
ties. He is a blurred, indeterminate, self-contradicting 
group of faculties, he has no unerring organic prefer- 
ence to lead him to his work. He is the nearest approach 
we can make to that “ all-round man ” we hear so much 
_of; but the intricate duties of social service do not 
furnish us with one-sized cylindrical holes for our ma- 
chine-made pegs. Into some hole he must go, we will 
not feed him else; so in he pops, and “ settles down for 
life.” 

That is our common phrase for a permanent establish- 
ment in the active service of Society, otherwise known as | 


*¢ self-support,” ‘‘ earning one’s living,” “ maintaining 
a family.” Our average man is not expected to love his 


work, to enjoy it, to grow continually through it. He 


360 HUMAN WORK 


does all this sometimes, but too rarely. Our methods of 
education have been specially esteemed, not because they 
taught the child to like what he did, but taught him to 
do what he did not like. We take it for granted that he 
will not like his life work, and so seek to fit him for con- 
tinued application to distasteful service. 

In such work as this, there is a continuous waste of 
nerve force. Compelled attention, and action that is 
not led by interest and fed by the natural discharge of 
energy along preferred lines, are suicidally wasteful. 
In Nature’s effort to reduce this steady leakage of life 
force, she transfers the action to the domain of habit as 
rapidly as possible; and the sufferer experiences that 
much relief. Dislike, the exhausting effort of enforced 
attention, and the plunging and kicking of more normal 
impulses toward other activities, give way at length to a 
dull contentment, a patient submission to monotonous 
routine, and some pale pleasure in its monotony. 

There are three large distinct evils to Society in such 
an artificial misplacement of its members. First, the 
work done is not as good nor as plentiful as if it were 
done on lines of true organic relation, by the men spe- 
cialised in power and preference for that work. In the 
second place, the man is weakened and worn out prema- 
turely by the unnatural effort to do what he does not 
like, what he is not fitted for, what is not his own special 
work; thus further reducing the output. And in the 
third place, the overtaxed and unhappy worker requires 
all manner of extra inducements and palliations to keep 
him at his unsuitable task. He has to have rest, more 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 361 


and more vacations and changes, or breaks down sooner. 
He has to have various fictitious excitements in his 
work—making it a game, a race, or a fight; to make up 
for its lack of normal interest. 

And he has to have “‘ amusement ” and “ recreation ” 
also of an unnatural, morbid kind—heavy doses of 
social stimulus coarsened and concentrated to suit his ex- 
hausted nerves. All this beyond the prominent well- 
known evil of the resort to physical stimulant and solace, 
such as alcohol and tobacco. These last rapidly deter- 
riorate the physical stock of the race; again injuring So- 
ciety in the stuff it is made of ; but the degraded and ex- 
cessive amusements injure the very soul of Society; 
lowering every kind of art which caters to them, and so 
demoralising the highest lines of advancement. 

A thousand minor lines of injury may be traced, such 
as the increase in defective children, owing to exhausted 
parents, and its accompanying tax upon Society’s re- 
sources; but these main lines stand forth clearly: The 
limitation and degradation of the social output, and the 
deterioration of tissue in the constituent members of 
Society. 

The deterioration of human stock is twofold; partly 
due to the strained, unnatural position of the worker; 
and partly due to the effect of inferior supplies furnished 
by his degraded product. In the more directly useful 
human products there is less injury: than in the higher 
forms. In food and clothing and carpenter work it is 
easier to detect fault and falsehood, and there is less of 
it; though even in these departments our adulterated 


362 HUMAN WORK 


food, shoddy clothing, and jerry-built houses do harm 
enough; but in the more advanced professions, the evil 
is enormous. The faults and falsehoods in product, in 
literature, art, religion, government, and education, 
that spring, first, from their being done by the round 
man in the square hole, and second, from their being 
done for the unhealthy demands of the other round men 
in square holes,—these work incalculable harm. 

Here is the girl who is trained to be a teacher because 
it is reputable, and who accepts her square hole and does 
her unsatisfying work as patiently and dutifully as 
she can. It is excellence we want in work, not a patient 
and dutiful inferiority. This inferior quality of teach- 
ing is further lowered by the unwise demands of the mis- 
placed people who pay the teacher, and so a continuous 
morbid action is generated. It would be a hard task to 
show one human grief, one human sin, that does not find 
part of its cause and maintenance in this so general con- 
dition of our life to-day. See the comparative result in 
our physical organism if we set fingers to serving as 
toes, eyes as ears, lungs as livers. If any such misplace- 
ment were conceivable, it would involve so low a degree 
of development in the various parts that it was possible 
to exchange services, and none of them could do good 
service. | 

In the social organism such high specialism and effi- 
ciency as we have is due to the progressive force of our 
economic development, calling forth such positive pref- 
erence in some men that they will do the work they like 
best. All the world’s great servants and helpers have 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 363 


been thus driven from within, by the rising flood of 
social energy, specialised to one burning focal point of 
expression. Such men work without reward, and re- 
gardless of opposition; work their lives long, often live 
and die poor and unhonoured, simply because they were 
true to their fundamental duty as human beings—to 
serve Society in the function for which they were evolved. 
In spite of their neglect, abuse, and injury, they are not 
to be pitied; for, on the one hand, they had the enor- 
mous joy of serving humanity; and on the other—even 
if they were not aware of that high pleasure—they had 
the intense functional satisfaction of doing the work 
they were made for. 

We are sc used to “ the dull level a mediocrity,” and 
the labour whose noblest height is conscientious effort, 
that when we do find a strongly specialised individual so 
highly fitted to perform one service that he can do no 
other 
working in these 
pour of social energy through a natural channel—that 
we have put the cart before the horse as usual, and de- 


we call him a genius. So great is the power of 
66 


geniuses ”—the happy lavish out- 


fined genius as “ the capacity for hard work.” There 
are a thousand hard workers for one genius, but a fact 
like that does not worry our shallow generalisers. Un- 
fortunately, owing to our lack of true education and the 
crushing weight of the false, only the exceptional 
genius now and then succeeds in forcing his way to his 
true place, and he does it by breaking through the poor, 
blundering, reward-and-penalty system with which we 
obstruct social development, and by letting out what is 


364 HUMAN WORK | 
in him, producing his natural fruitage of work, quite 
irrespective of pay or punishment. 

Thanks to this quenchless functional vigour of So- 
ciety we are never without some natural work; and 
thanks to our vast facility of transmission we all share 
in the products of genius to a greater or less’ extent. 
Yet it is but a painful and niggard harvest compared to 
the universal crop we might enjoy if we would let it 
grow. Happiness to the individual is in fulfilment of 
function, it is as much in farming as in fiddling, if you 
like it—* every man to his taste.” And the benefit to 
society lies in every man’s working “ to his taste”; as 
beautiful and desirable a combination as need be 
imagined. 

This does not mear that all would manifest trans- 
cendent genius, but that each, in his place and degree, 
would have that strong instinctive tendency, that vivid 
delight in fulfilment of function which should accom- 
pany human work in every department. 


XVII: THE TRUE POSITION 
Summary 


Duty of improvement for individual and race. Effect 
of Ego concept. Collective nature of Christianity— 
“* our’ daily bread.” Unity of man. “ Kingdom of 
Heaven.” First human duty to assume right functional 
relation to Society. Right social relation tends to de- 
velop all virtues, to eliminate all sms. Want Theory 
and theft corollary. Normal distribution prevents ab- 
normal acquisition. Sims against property and person. 
Thieving produced by clot of wealth. Right organic 
relation. End of “the wolf,” of “ our” sins, of un- 
necessary diseases. Twofold duty—to change con- 
cepts and conditions. Public school and library. So- 
cial debt to the worker. Malthusian doctrine. T'rue 
law of increase in population. Natural selection among 
individuals. Difference mm organic development. Arti- 
ficial selection. Stirpiculture. Superior methods of so- 
cial improvement. Poverty increases number of births, 
but decreases quality. “ Individuation is in inverse pro- 
portion to reproduction.” Splendid opportunities. 
Two roads to health. Right condition—right action. 
General cause of local evil. The home, effect on so- 
cial consciousness. Better housmg. Way to growth. 
Human nature. Happiness. 


XVII 
Pe eRe ROS LP LON 


To be—to re-be—and to be better, none can deny this 
order of duties; and the last is the highest. 

To become better as individuals has long been 
preached to us; to become better as a race is no un- 
natural proposition. Heretofore, the Ego concept rul- 
ing, we have supposed that this was only to be done by 
improving as many individuals as possible. And as in- 
dividual conduct, ego-guided, consisted in each doing 
things for his own benefit, here and hereafter; our im- 
provement has been somewhat hesitant and tortuous, 
both in person and in race. It is really singular to see 
how the Ego concept has held us from understanding 
what was best in our religion. The one great advantage 
of Christianity over Buddhism, or Mohammedanism, is 
in its radical collectivity. As far as a pure monotheism 
goes—the constant worship and service of God, the 
Mohammedan is beyond us. As far as a pure morality 
goes—an exalted sinlessness, the Buddhist is beyond us. 

But none of them prays: “ Give ws each day our daily 
bread.”” Now is it not, truly, a strange thing that we 
should have been taught that prayer for two thousand 
years, and yet every man Jack of us goes forth stoutly, 
to get his own private and personal daily bread as 
rapidly as possible? 

3 367 


368 HUMAN WORK 


The strongly enthroned Ego concept of more ancient 
times; buttressed hugely by the dark savagery and 
sordid barter of as ancient religions, has successfully 
evaded the recognition of Christianity’s great central 
truth, that man is one. Not only that God is one—Jew 
and Mohammedan know that ; but that man is one—that 
we are inextricably interconnected, and cannot be con- 
sidered separately. ‘‘ No man liveth to himself, nor 
dieth to himself.”? ‘*‘ He that seeketh his life shall lose it. 
and he that loseth his life for my sake [man’s] shall find 
it.” ‘* Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least 
of these, ye have done it unto me.” 

Resting on the firm basis of natural law, and af- 
firmed insistently by our prevailing religion, is the fact 
of human solidarity. 

The improvement of human life does not consist in 
withdrawing as many individual souls as possible for 
a “reward” (that everlasting payment theory!) in 
Heaven; but in a diligent bringing about of what that 
same principal prayer of ours sets clearly before us— 
the Kingdom come, and the will done, right here. ‘This, 
too, we have intellectually admitted to be desirable; but 
have united in transferring the occasion to a remote and 
uncertain period, known as the millennium. 

Now, what, in the light of truth as at present open to 
us, is the best way to improve the human race, and there- 
fore our highest duty? Recognising the organic re- 
lation of Society; that our very life, to say nothing of 
our improvement, rests on our becoming properly re- 
lated to each other in the specialised service which con- 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 369 


stitutes a human life; and to perform that service ever 
better—the first duty of a human being stands promi- 
nently forth. It is this: 

To assume right functional relation to Society, to 
one another. Not charity, not philanthropy, not 
benevolence, not self-immolation or self-sacrifice or self 
anything; but simply to find and hold our proper place 
in the Work in which and by which we all live. 

To do one’s right work involves all the virtues. 

Our virtues are always matters of interrelation ; they 
concern our attitude toward each other, our treatment 
of each other. An individual man, alone, can manifest 
no virtues beyond those of a clean beast. Human life 
is interrelative, and all its virtues, 7. e., distinctive quali- 
ties, are interrelative. Once accept this basic duty in 
fulfilment of specialised service, and all those virtues, 
we, as individuals, have been so fatuously striving for, 
appear in us, as natural corollary of that right rela- 
tion. Conversely our “ sins,” namely, our various forms 
of social disease, manifest in the bewildered individual, 
will of themselves go out as naturally as the virtues 
come in. 

Classify our sins. One enormous mass we call sins 
against property; all forms of theft, robbery, and the 
larger and subtler kind of dishonest appropriation. 
This class is the natural result of our perverted distri- 
bution of social products. Iteis one of the many weak 
spots of the Want theory that an absence of the es- 
sentials of life, instead of promoting industry, often 
produces more direct and injurious methods of trans- 


370 HUMAN WORK 


fer. Quite the larger part of our legal machinery is 
devoted to the maintenance of the local congestion of 
wealth on the one hand, and to the prevention of the 
breaking-down of the social tissues under pressure of 
that congestion on the other. Given a surplus of 
wealth in some places and a deficit in others, and the 
fabric of human nature breaks down in a given propor- 
tion. 

Want makes men steal quite as naturally as it makes 
them work, indeed more so, as being the earlier custom. 
Our political economics founded on the Want theory 
should give half their pages to a study of the propor- 
tionate relation between Want, Theft, and Wealth, 
after the learned discussion of Want, Work, and 
Wealth. One is as legitimate a fact in economics as 
the other. | 

That normal distribution of social products which | 
would provide the growing individual with all that he 
needed to bring out his best powers, and which would 
teach him clearly where and how to use those powers in 
return, would drop out of the world completely this 
class of sins. The supply coming first, the child grow- 
ing up to measure his conduct as a return for what has 
been given him; taught from infancy to see in the 
world, behind and around him, the endless Giver, and 
himself as the product of it all and owing his output 
to those now alive, and more especially those to come— 
that child, that man, will have no comprehension of 
theft, major or minor. In a word: All illegitimate ac- 
quisition of property rests on the illegitimate retention 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 371 


of property. Remove the cause, and you remove the ef- 
fect. 

What remains? Sins against the person. Part of 
these are based on property also,—all murder and 


> or in revenge 


violence done ‘‘ with interested motives,’ 
for previous injury to property, or denial of property. 
A large majority of the sins against the person would 
go, too, when we establish right distribution. 

There remain the sins based on the sex relation. The 
right economic position for women will remove the 
greater part of these. When women no longer make 
their living out of their loving, the prostitute, and that 
more successful specialist, the mercenary wife, will leave 
the world. The reduction of sex-attraction from its 
present fever-height to a normal level, and the perfect 
freedom for true marriage resultant upon right dis- 
tribution of property, will take away the cruder and 
more violent forms of sexual sin, and gives us pure mo- 
nogamy at last. 

I do not say that all sin would leave the world upon 
our assuming right economic relations; nor even that 
this great mass would disappear in a night; but the 
cause of the disease being removed, the healthy social 
currents would flow calmly on and we should soon out- 
grow these evils too long endured. Social disease will 
eliminate itself by right living as does physical disease. 

** Sins ” are always phenomena of defective social re- 
lation—they are not individual matters at all, an indi- 
vidual can no more do wrong than he can do right. The 
beasts have no morals because they have no Society. 


372 HUMAN WORK 

Human conduct is all interrelative; and right or wrong 
as it affects the others. Given any wrong relation in 
Society, and a certain proportion of sin works out | 
among its members, now here, now there, according to 
the nature of the diseased relation. 

The despot breeds the sycophant, the liar, the assas- 
sin; the rich man breeds the thief ; the woman who makes 
her living by marriage, the prostitute. And these sins 
cannot be checked in the point of expression, the indi- 
vidual, any more than you can cure scarlet fever with 
salve. 

We are good, or We are bad,—with remarkable dis- 
connection of personal circumstance. The'thieving pro- 
duced by the clot of wealth may not break out in.the 
immediately surrounding tissue if that is pretty healthy, 
but creeps along the line of least resistance, and appears 
through the brain least able to resist it. | 

No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself, 
again. | 

If, then, this great field of evil, and a thousand as 
evil concomitants, may be cleared off the world by the 
adoption of more healthy social processes; if those 
healthy social processes consist in each person’s being 
in his right place, and doing his right work in Society ; 
if, too, it clearly appears that to the individual con- 
sciousness this right place and right work represent 
Happiness,—Happiness such as we have never been 
able to conceive in our little ego-stunted brains; then 
human duty looms up large and clear. 

To find your right place, to do your right work, here 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 373 


is the basis of all virtue, joy, and growth. Here is a 
steady improvement of every human product, things 
better and more beautiful, things made more easily 
and more plentifully; and every human being, better 
nourished physically and socially, pouring forth the 
ever-rising tide in harmonious social growth through 
work. It means a lifting from the heart of man, first, 
of Care. All that life-long terror of the Wolf, the . 
dragging weight that follows from the young father’s 
anxiety over his first-born—can he provide for it?—to 
the dying man’s anxiety over his growing children and 
wife left behind—can he provide for them? This crip- 
pling terror—(which we have solemnly affirmed was an 
incentive to labour!)—being remgved for ever by the 
mutual insurance of a civilised society; man can lift his 
head and work with a light heart and a free hand. 

It means lifting from the heart of man, second, Sin. 
Just to see that Sin is Owrs, not mine and thine, means 
instant relief and illumination. Then to see where it 
comes from, to remove its causes, to watch its shadow 
recede slowly from the glad, bright face of man, like 
the passing of an eclipse; that will leave us free to work 
indeed. 

It means lifting from the body of man nearly all his 
load of disease ; his diseases being as clearly traceable to 
social disorder as his sins. There is no difference, save 
that one is manifested in physical relations, and the 
other in social. That the human animal should not be 
as clean and healthy as other animals is due to his false 
social relations. When they are right, he maintains all 


374 HUMAN WORK 


the animal’s physical purity and vigour, and adds to it 
the yet unsounded depths of social vigour. 

With a prospect like this before us, what prevents 
a sweeping and instant change? Nothing prevents a 
sweeping and instant change in the minds of some of 
us; a recognition of the nature of human life and human 
work which sees it all natural, all healthful, all good, 
_in itself; and the bad only an evanescent mistake, easily 
to be avoided in future; but to spread that recognition 
in the minds of all of us means time and effort, and can- 
not become general at once. 

Meanwhile, it is open to us, without waiting for all 
to see alike these patent truths, to go to work on such 
changes in economic condition as shall soonest check the 
decay in social tissues so dangerously apparent at both 
ends of our present “* Society,” and to bring up, as soon 
as may be, those whose growth has been arrested for 
ages. 

The world is full of aborted people, aborted by the 
crushing pressure of these old lies in economics; people 
crippled in mind, people crippled in body, people swollen 
and distorted from being oversupplied and underworked ; 
people shrunken and distorted from being overworked 
and undersupplied. 'These can be helped at once by 
those of us who see the wisdom of improving the race 
without waiting for them to understand and accept 
the principles on which the change in condition rests. 
We did not wait for all the citizens of America to be- 
lieve in the principles involved, before giving them the 
public school and public library. Many do not, when 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 375 


questioned, even now believe in those principles. But 
they are not reluctant to avail themselves of the pro- 
vision made; and the advantageous results of that pro- 
vision are apparent in our citizens, whether they under- 
stand why or not. 

There are some most comforting facts, meanwhile, in 
our social relationship, which enable us to attack the 
concrete problems of our time with courage and pa- 
tience. Seeing that our gain is social, and not indi- 
vidual, and that it is rapidly transmissible as far as the 
brain is open to transmission, we have but to develop the 
brain of our laggard members to bring them into pos- 
session of the whole great field of social advance. The 
wealth of Society, steadily augmented as it is by the 
very individuals who need so much more social return 
than they have ever had, is quite equal to any drain 
which may be necessary to pay up our arrears of debt 
to the worker. A conscientious and aroused society, 
seeing how unjustly neglected have been its most val- 
uable constituents, cannot do too much to bring to 
them, and to their children, all the social nourishment 
they can absorb; i. ¢., to provide the best possible edu- 
cational environment for the children who need it most. 

Here arises a question, based on previous social 
studies and conclusions. If Society provides generously 
for its most needy members, will not that injure the 
world by multiplying the least desirable class? Will it 
not put a premium on deficiency, instead of efficiency? 
This idea rests not only on the Want theory and the 
Ego concept, but on the Malthusian doctrine. It is 


376 HUMAN WORK 


believed that human beings tend to multiply in a certain 
ratio; that the advantage to the race lies in the de- 
velopment of better individuals, not in mere numbers; 
and that better individuals are developed by personal 
competition, by the “ struggle for existence” and “ the 
survival of the fittest.” 

As soon as we see the organic unity of Society, this 


** struggle for existence ” 


idea must change its terms. 
What we are now concerned with is the development of 
ever better social organs and functions, and that de- 
velopment does not take place in a direct combat be- 
tween individuals, but in a superior process supplanting 
an inferior process, with no essential injury to the con- 
stituents. 

The introduction of machinery, for instance, was a 
legitimate social progress. The injury to working men 
which we allowed to accompany it, was not in any way 
essential to social progress, but militated against it. 
Interdependent organs do not fight with one another. 
Their change in form and value is gradual, and in- 
volves no immediate destruction to constituent cells. 
Society improves by the development of its component 
parts, not by a destructive conflict of parts. If you are - 
seeking to improve a family of children or a breed of 
fowls, you do not do it by pitting them against one an- 
other and cheerfully retaining the “ survivors ” as the 
‘most fit.” The egg-laying capacity of the hen, the 
milk-giving capacity of the cow, is not developed by 
combat between hens, or between cows (or their re- 
spective cocks and bulls)! To this it will be eagerly 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 377 


replied, “‘ Ah, yes, but we do it by selection—by care- 
fully choosing the ones best suited, and breeding from 
them. They do not survive from natural selection, but 
from artificial selection. Now if we were free to prac- 
tice that on Society, if we could choose the best types 
and breed from them only, then we could indeed improve 
the race.” 

That this is one process of improvement is not de- 
nied. But it is not the only, nor by any means the 
most valuable process in the social organism. The 
swiftest and broadest medium of social improvement 
lies in that great common sensorium of ours, the brain. 
By social contact and example, by social transmission, 
the more advanced members of Society can lift the less 
advanced at a rate immeasurably faster than the slow 
current of heredity. We have all seen this in families 
of very low-grade people, obtaining sudden access to 
social advantages by present methods, and changing in 
mind and body to a marked degree, even in one genera- 
tion. This gain is of course incorporated in the family. 
through heredity, but the effect of ten years’ access to 
the social stores of knowledge, culture, and refinement 
changes an individual to a very great degree. This im- 
mense power of education, using the word in its very 
widest sense, can be turned on to every child of the race, 
if we so choose, with a speedy result of race improve- 
ment which would laugh to scorn the fumbling, waste- 
ful processes of natural selection, and the one-step-better 
methods cf artificial selection. It is by transmission 
that we raise the social level most rapidly; a free and 


878 HUMAN WORK 


general transmission of the product of the special 
worker to the hands and minds of all. 

For Society to bestow the same care and provision 
on all its children that the wisest parent now seeks to 
bestow on his would develop the race faster than any- 
thing conceivable. That this method would at once im- 
prove the individual, the race, and the productivity of 
both, is clear. That it would “ pauperise”’ has been 
shown to be an erroneous deduction from the Want 
theory; under which we are indeed all potential, and 
some actual, paupers. The further claim that it would 
tend to a too rapid increase of population, especially 
among the least fit, should be carefully examined. 

The Malthusian error is in assuming that a given 
rate of reproduction is fixed and final. If Malthus had 
studied the subject more deeply, he would have found 
that the rate of reproduction varies widely, not only in 
the “‘ animal kingdom” but the man. This variation 
is relative to other conditions ; and has been thus formu- 
lated by Spencer, ‘‘ Reproduction is in inverse propor- 
tion to individuation.” 'The lower the efficiency of the 
individual, the more young ones it has. 

Progressive specialisation, bringing a higher degree 
of individual efficiency, carries with it a decrease in the 
rate of reproduction. The myriad eggs of the fish or 
insect are followed as species develop by the lesser litters 
of high-grade quadrupeds, till we reach one at a birth. 
A fish that only laid one egg at a time would not have 
a very tall family tree. In man we have the general 
rule of one at a time; but we have it more times in some 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 879 


cases than in others. The human birth rate varies 
widely, too; and the action of the same law, a higher 
development of the individual, higher specialisation, 
leads to a lower birth rate. 

There are also artificial variants, as so painfully 
shown in the dwindling of France’s population; but 
quite apart from any morbid processes of stirpiculture 
lies this broad and beautiful law,—the higher specialisa- 
tion of the individual tends to reduce the birth rate. 
This is shown with clearness through all the turbid cross- 
currents of our mistaken behaviour; the most de- 
veloped kind of people have the least children, and the 
least developed kind of people have the most children. 
Even in folk lore we see it indicated—* there was once 
a King and a Queen who were perfectly happy, except 
that they had no children,” and on the other hand, 
**’'The poor man hath his quiver full.” 

The capacity of the world to support humanity in 
health and comfort has a limit; it is not near enough to 
frighten us, but it is there. If human beings are left 
to struggle on alone in unnatural individualism, their 
arrested development fills up the world, too, with nu- 
merous, but inefficient people. But as a conscious and 
intelligent society hastens to spread its gains among all 
its parts; to make the progress of the race the rich 
possession of all its members; so fully to educate and 
develop every child as to promote the higher specialisa- 
tion of the individual, at a rate unconscious natural 
processes never dreamed of, then we see a_ steady 
diminution of this threatening birth rate. By this means 


380 HUMAN WORK 


we work steadily toward a far higher average of social 
efficiency, with a permanent balance of birth and death, 
involving no arbitrary personal tampering with natural 
processes, but a recognition of the working of natural 
law. 

It would seem needless to say that the individuation 
of woman is the most prominent necessity here, as her 
rate of fecundity is the determining, factor in the case, 
not the man’s; yet there are still some who ignore even 
so patent a fact as this. ) 

See, then, how swiftly and surely an awakened so- 
ciety can right its wrongs, cure and outgrow its dis- 
eases, understand, pity, and leave far behind its sins. 
The highest human duty for the individual is to enter 
upon his or her special work in the world—that is vital, 
that is first, that underlies all. There is no right life for 
any human creature who is not taking part in the or- 
ganic processes of Society. And if, in our present 
blurred and jumbled condition, we have not the sure 


66 b) 


guide of a “ calling,” a special inborn preference and 
power; why, that only leaves us freer to take hold any- 
where of the thousand things that need doing; paid, or 
unpaid—that is immaterial. The point is to do the 
work and to do it for the service of Society. No matter 
for the past account, for arrears of social pampering 
or social neglect ; we are all responsible for both. No 
malicious crowd of despots, masters, owners, and em- 
ployers has conspired to injuriously deprive the an- 
gelic workingman of his rights. We have all believed 


in these economic falsehoods, the inevitable action of 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 381 


which was to produce the conditions we now suffer from. 
We must all lay them aside; wasting no time or energy 
on remorse, and simply set to work to make things right. 
From that class of people who “do not have to 
work ”—that is, who have been paid and overpaid in 
advance—there is an overwhelming debt of honour due 
the world. In that great field of action where there is 
no pay, nor even thanks as yet; in the efforts necessary 
to teach the right things, and to provide the right 
things for the world’s little children, there is ample 
room for the most helplessly rich. Also in the work of 
spreading the social supplies where they belong—among 
the whole people—there is work there, much work, not 
only unpaid and unthanked, but heartily resisted. 
There was never a time in history when more splendid 
opportunities were open to those who would serve so- 
ciety. Thousands of us are at it already, organised and 
unorganised ; a rising flood of love and service, toiling 
manfully, and womanfully, at the mighty task. But 
the economic darkness makes it blind work at best. 
Most of our conscious “ social service ” to-day is di- 
rected, naturally enough, to ministering to the social 
diseases. Now, if a man is sick, there are two ways to 
re-establish his health—both necessary. One is to re- 
store normal conditions to his body, trusting that a 
normal body will urge to normal action, and so keep 
him well. The other is to induce normal action, trust- 
ing to that to restore right conditions in the body. 
Each is a good thing, each tends to produce the desired 
result; but both are incomparably better than either. 


382 HUMAN WORK 


Our sick Society needs this double treatment. The first 
condition of normal action we have here reviewed at 
length; consciously to assume true place in the organic 
industries of human life. If all of us do that, the cur- 
rents of right action will assuredly build us a healthy 
social body. But we can greatly hasten that good end 
by rearranging the social body too. Here the law of 
interaction between spirit and form comes to our aid, 
and makes possible an incredible rate of progress. 

Take, for instance, an advanced case in social pathol- 
ogy—a city slum. Now there are two ways for a con- 
scious society to focus its forces on the diseased part 
and regenerate it. One is by dealing with the spirit of 
the slum, the people themselves; by so educating the 
children, so stimulating the adult, so providing proper 
opportunity for right social service for all, that the 
people will change in character, and, reacting, soon 
make the slum a fair, clean, healthful part of the 
city. 

The other is to deal with the body of the slum, the 
houses, streets, and shops; and so to reconstruct them 
that they shall steadily react on the people and change 
their character. Both can be done, both are being done, 
but so feebly and partially, in such tiny spots of change, 
under such heavy opposition and heavier indifference, 
that the gain is heart-breakingly slow. While one play- 
ground is being made, while one new method of educa- 
tion is being introduced, a thousand babies die, a thou- 
sand children become criminals, a thousand wretched men 
and women sink to the hopeless grade, are lost to so- 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 383 


ciety, become diseased tissue, and are miserably sloughed 
off through asylum, prison, and hospital. 

The cause of the delay is this: We are treating social 
disease by local application. We find, as it were, a 
tubercle or boil upon the body politic, we apply all 
manner of treatment—the poultice, the counter-irritant, 
the excising knife of capital punishment ; but we forget, 
or do not know, that this local trouble, however poig- 
nantly conspicuous, is on a living body, and is caused 
and maintained by diseased conditions in that body, far 
beyond the material boundaries of that location. 

We must, of course, use prompt and strong measures 
in these most painful spots; but the treatment necessary 
to prevent the formation of these conspicuously evil 
places must be applied to all of us. It is as necessary 
for the right education and stimulus to be applied to 
the rich and well-to-do as to the poor, to the isolated 
farmer in the field as well as the crowded sweater in the 
shop; and not only those methods touching the people’s 
character, but the other, the prompter ones, touching 
their physical conditions. 

There are certain physical conditions in the social 
body, brick and mortar conditions, which are affecting 
us all for evil, and which can be readily changed. 
There are, also, certain economic relations in that body, 
affecting us all for evil, that can equally be changed. 
We need to see these in their true importance; as affect- 
ing not only the immediate individuals concerned, but 
as so affecting the whole structure of Society as to in- 
exorably produce the conspicuous evils with which we are 


384 HUMAN WORK 


so painfully familiar. Once recognised, our duty is 
clear—a glad, swift, forward movement bringing joy 
and gain to all. 

What are these general conditions? 

One is the economic position of woman, which in- 
volves false sex relations, including all forms of prosti- 
tution; maintains primitive individual instincts and 
checks social ones, and is largely responsible for the 
morbid action of social economics. Another is the main- 
tenance of domestic industry ; which, as I have shown in 
another book, prevents the development of the home, the 
progress of woman, the right education of the child, and 
the normal progress of man. 

Combined, these two conditions find material form in 
that hotbed of primitive egoism, the cumbrous, ex- 
pensive, inadequate dwelling house of our time, or 
rather, of past time, of the most remote and barbarous 
time, most injuriously preserved in this. It is true that 
each human being needs a wholly private and personal 
room to rest in; that solitude, pure individual solitude, 
is a social necessity. It is also true that the great 
primal group, the family, needs its group of rooms, its 
private home. But the point of divergence is in the 
Work involved. 

Work is social, it does not belong to the person nor, 
in any advanced degree, to the family. That so much 
human work is at present performed in and for the 
separate family is an enormous condition of social evil. 
It maintains, beyond all the efforts of religion and 
- science to combat, the selfishness of the primeval Pig. 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 385 


Social consciousness and its great currents of love 
and enthusiasm, of power and pride, cannot find room 
in brains continually cramped by application to the 
most ignominiously personal concerns. | 

It is not only that the family could have a far 
simpler, purer, and more private life if they would but 
take advantage of our immense social facilities, but so 
could the individual men and women; born and reared in 
_ families, to be sure, but born and reared as members 
of Society, active and responsible factors in social prog- 
ress. 

These men and women, if the families they grew 
up in were in true social relation, instead of each one 
keeping up a little down-drawing whirlpool of ante- 
diluvian individualism, would be a thousand times more 
valuable citizens. While the minds of our women are 
exercised only, or mainly, in impression and expression 
of a purely personal nature, they and their stunted 
children and heavily handicapped men cannot properly 
receive and discharge the vivifying currents of social 
consciousness. 

That consciousness forces itself out here and there 
through specially sensitive individuals, usually at great 
personal sacrifice. These special individuals, heavily 
charged with the social spirit, push and struggle, work 
and fight, suffer and die, trying to stir to equal life the 
great ego-bound mass of unawakened Society. Much 
work has been accomplished, great good has been done, 
the world is incomparably better off for the presence of 
these better developed members, but our gain is as 


386 - HUMAN WORK 


nothing to what it would be if the progress was shared 
by all. : | 

If we were still savages, still beasts, still mere indi- 
viduals, this book and its many brothers might as well 
wait for weary thousands of years more, but we are not. 
We are, in patent fact, highly specialised members of 
a highly advanced Society ; but our eyes are holden, our 
minds are darkened by piously preserved collections of 
old concepts long found false. We can lay aside these 
erroneous ideas at a moment’s recognition of the true. 
We can incorporate the true into the make-up of our 
minds by acting upon them. We can put ourselves in 
touch with the heart of the world, sharing its splendid 
pulses, its tireless energy, its flood of common human 
love, by simply doing our right work. We can break 
up forever the old false tendencies of thought and feel- 
ing by rearranging our material conditions in line with 
true social forces. 

‘“* Better housing for the poor” is necessary, but 
so it is for the rich, for all of us. Truer housing; 
housing suitable to the age we live in; housing proper 
to the human soul. We build “ the house of God,” 
bringing to it the highest love and power and aspira- 
tion; and that house uplifts the soul of the beholder. 
What prevents our building the houses of Man with 
that high love and power and aspiration—that splendid 
beauty, ennobling space, and tender ornament? Only 
that ancient, shrivelled, artificially preserved mummy, 
the Ego concept, prevents. 7 

You cannot build right houses for modern humanity 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 387 


on the basis of a kitchen, on the service of the belly of 
a beast. Rightly to nourish all people makes the feed- 
ing of humanity as noble a form of work as any other 
work broad and beautiful and true, to be devoutly en- 
tered upon and grandly fulfilled; to cater only to the 
bodily desires of one’s own family is proper to the level 
of meanest savagery. 

A rearrangement of ideas and their consequent feel- 
ings, from the process false to the process true, is 
possible to any sane mind, is the duty of every last one 
of us. A rearrangement of the external conditions 
follows logically and helps materially. This we can 
do in the mind at once, in the body not so promptly, 
but still swiftly in our age of mechanical wonders. 
And why should we? What will it mean to us? We 
should, for underlying cause, because it is in the line of 
social evolution; a race duty. Because in doing it we 
further the divine purpose, we fulfil ultimate law. But 
if the so-long-stunted soul demands its pay, there is 
reason more than enough. 

Are men so happy now, each trying to take care of 
himself and his family, that they should dread the peace 
and ease given by society’s vast resources in full cir- 
culation? Are women so happy now, either the squaw 
or the parasite, that they should dread becoming full 
human beings, active, conscious members of society? 
What this change will mean to us no one can fully 
measure, but those who know anything of the real heart 
of humanity, those who can interpret the gleams of 
light that break through all religions, those who ever 


388 HUMAN WORK 


felt the soul lift and light and swell with power and 
joy, under the influence of music, or painting, or 
speech, or any form of human work, can tell us some- 
thing of it. 

We have been taught, in tattered remnants of worn- 
out faiths, to despise human nature. We, forsooth, 
mere worms and weaklings, ‘‘ as prone to evil as the 
sparks are to fly upward,” we were born in iniquity, 
conceived in sin, doomed to suffer here, and likely to 
suffer forever, important worms that we were! 

We have been taught in later days, by half-seeing 
students of science, that we were but beasts, and must 
fight it out as they did, our progress lying in the slow 
and painful process of survival. 

What a change in thought, in feeling, in action, when 
we see that we are the crowning form of created life, 
we, collectively, though never so much “ worms ” taken 
personally. That Humanity is the one fact we should 
realise, and that in it we find free scope and full satis- 
faction for all the vague aspirations which have haunted 
the individual. That in that organic social life we are 
all held together by our mutual service, by our work, 
and that in our work and only in our work lies growth, 
lies peace, lies the highest human duty, lies happiness. 

Happiness, for a human being, is in full, true, con- 
scious, social relation: 

To feel the world’s life, unbroken in its steady pour, 
from the inchoate nebule, through age on age of 
changing orders, into the spreading growth of an or- 
ganised democracy. To feel our own historic family, 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 389 


the immense racial pride of the long ascent, the conquest 
of elements, of plants, of animals, the unquenchable fire 
of progress, the vast and rapid increase of the race: 

To feel the extending light of common consciousness 
as Society comes alive !—the tingling “I” that reaches 
wider and wider in every age, that is sweeping through 
the world to-day like an electric current, that lifts and 
lights and enlarges the human soul in kindling majesty: 

To feel the power! the endless power! Not only the 
ceaseless stream of the universal Godness, but our in- 
terminable array of batteries, full charged; the stored 
energy of all time embodied in poem and story, in pic- 
ture and statue, in music and architecture, in every tool, 
utensil, and giant machine wherein the human brain 
and the human hand have made force incarnate: 

And, so feeling, to Do: 

' To Do, as only Human beings can; not in the paltry 
processes of the individual, mere servant of his stomach, 
but in the fascinating complexity and rhythmic splen- 
dour of the march of social activities; to take part in 
that huge, thrilling, organic life in which the individual 
thrives unconscious—of which the soul is lodged in each 
of us: 

And in the ceaseless development of that measureless 
vitality, this vast, ever-increasing Social Life, to feel, 
now and again,—always oftener,—the distant music 
of the universe grow clearer—that is Happiness. 


_ THE END 


reece al ae a —— 
Sect eee am nina a te a ELE 
ee ae a 


A sana 


ee ee 
C_m i —_ 
ee ee ee Ee Te ae 
a aa ate. ak diel 
» -. = 7 


URBANA 


4 
oS 
= 
=J 
= 
_s 
Eo 
> 
= 
na 
ce 
uu 
= 
r 4 
= 


